Kane Cornes believes Adelaide are in for a “big wake-up call” this off-season following the club’s recent appointment of fitness guru Darren Burgess.
Burgess left AFL premiers Melbourne at the end of the 2021 season and will oversee the Crows’ AFL and AFLW high-performance programs for next year.
He’s worked with numerous clubs acorss multiple sporting codes, including time at Liverpool and Arsenal in the English Premier League.
The 48-year-old’s reputation precedes him as a hard-nosed operator, and Cornes remembers how he whipped Port Adelaide players into shape while the pair were at the club.
“When Darren Burgess came across with Ken Hinkley for his second stint at Port Adelaide, we’d won five games in 2012 and the pre-season ending 2012 into the 2013 season we went across to Dubai, and the whole premise of the pre-season camp was physical resilience,” Cornes told SEN SA Breakfast.
“He said we’re going to train physical resilience in Dubai. Not only are we going to train once a day, we’re not going to train twice a day, we’re going to train three times a day for 10 days straight.
“It was the hardest thing I’d been through at that point of my career.
“We would do a really hard skill session in the morning, then have breakfast and go straight into a weights session and some cardio.
“Then we’d come back in the afternoon and do a pretty gruelling running session, and that was for 10 days in a row.
“The thought of it was just readjusting your attitude in terms of how much you can train.”
Adelaide’s young list has seen them struggle over the past two years, however they did show improvement in 2021 with seven wins.
2022 is set to be an important year for the club to take another step forward, and Cornes predicts Burgess’ appointment will help them do just that.
“Some AFL players, particularly during the year, you may only train for an hour and a half a week. An hour skill session, (maybe) an hour and 20 minutes and that’s your main session and then you’d go back for a captains run for half an hour in the afternoon,” he said.
“The Crows players who are used to that are in for a big wake-up call in terms of how often and how much they train.
“The usual little excuse of a tight hamstring or a twinge in the calf or something sore is probably not going to cut it at Adelaide.
“That’s exactly what they need, and the benefits will bring a huge upside for them.”
Next year will be coach Matthew Nicks’ third year in charge of the Crows.