On bonding as a team…
I've said some thank yous to the existing players that we're continuing on the journey with, because they've been absolutely fantastic at welcoming new faces and making them feel at home.
I've also said thank you to the new faces that we've had that have really added value and really made a significant effort to go out of their comfort zone and get to know the new people in the group.
We’ve all got to know each other really well, which is going to be really important for togetherness down the line when things are going to get tough, so we need to have each other.
On the recent trip to Utah…
We had a really busy week. It was productive – we didn’t waste a minute.
It was really difficult physically for the players. We settled in in the first couple of days after a long flight, long travel. The first training session was a little bit frustrating because we know we've got high standards but unfortunately we were paying the price of a long flight, but that's the whole point in going there.
The facilities were excellent for us to use but the heat and altitude for us in terms of developing the players' physical capacity was absolutely crucial. As the week went on I was really pleased with the standards lifting and us growing into the week.
We ended the week really positively with some really strong training sessions which led us into the fixture against Utah. For a long period of the game, I was pleased with the performance against Utah, but it's given us some information along the lines of the latter stage of the game and what we're going to need to do to physically be prepared to last the duration of games and more.
We knew that our pre-season this year had to look different to the years gone by. We know that the physical challenge is going to increase dramatically, and we had to do something to prepare us for the moments that are ahead of us. I really wanted to push the players not only physically, but mentally, in terms of their resilience.
I think they adapted to the camp really well under difficult conditions. The heat out there is quite extreme, so they did really well. It was a fantastic use of pre-season and I expect to reap the benefits later down the line.
