August 10, 2007 - 3:10pm
Story by: Sportal
George Gregan at boot camp


Wallabies scrumhalf George Gregan has spoken of the team spirit that has been fostered while on boot camp in the Queensland hinterland.
Australia's World Cup squad has been pushed to the extremes in an army-style training camp in rugged bush terrain this week being challenged both physically and mentally across a number of demanding tasks.
Wallabies players, coaches and management were grouped together throughout all the tasks and Gregan indicated it was a valuable exercise to build confidence across the entire World Cup squad as it builds for the tournament in France beginning in September.
"Straight away it builds the spirit – not that spirit was lacking in this team – we have a special spirit within this group, but this will harness it more," Gregan said after a tiring third day at bootcamp.
"We will have to wait and see (what effect it has) but we will be able to deal with adversity and we will have the confidence in each other to be able to do it."
"They (the Wallabies support staff) are the unsung heroes of the team – I know from experience that I wouldn't be where I was without the great medical staff on our team.
"All of those guys have been in there doing all the hard work, the push-ups and stuff, and it means a lot because you know that they will be able to do what they have to do at the World Cup – they will be working hard."
With the Wallabies divided into a six teams, individuals have had to rely on team-mates to achieve problem solving and physical tasks including midnight swims, abseiling and pushing an old car along an undulating sand trail.
"Pushing the car was our last activity and it was hard," said Gregan.
"It felt like it was a bit over a kilometre and it had a few hills, so we were working on momentum. Our physio David Bick was the driver and it must have been steering left a bit because I had to correct him to steer right a few times.
"It finished with a couple of hills and we really had to dig our heels in. It was a big effort. The car didn't go backwards which was the main point and we finished in about two hours and 50 minutes which was a pretty good effort."
"We also had to move six canisters of water about 200 metres up hill on a pretty steep gradient. You couldn't move more than 10 metres apart and you could only take four canisters at a time and everyone had to be together, so it was a team effort – we worked that out pretty swiftly and then we moved on to our next task where we had to abseil about 50 metres down a cliff face."
Players and management have said the camp has been challenging, beneficial and served as a good primer for the World Cup.


By Sportal for the ARU

http://aru.rugby.com.au/news/gregan_.../section/21893