There was no grace period when the Western Bulldogs returned to pre-season training after the holiday period, with the intensity of the Club’s pre-season campaign picking up where it left off pre-Christmas.

With last week’s fitness testing now complete, Assistant Coach Shannon Grant said the training focus would shift back to skills and contested work in the coming weeks.

“We’ve had a pretty big, strong focus on our testing last week and easing them back into our ball work and the areas of our game that we worked on prior to Christmas,” Grant said.

“We’ve ticked that off and really start to up the ante with our training this week.”

As the focus moves towards more match simulation drills and craft sessions, the coaching staff are still mindful of getting the volume of work into the playing group to best equip them for the rigours of the home and away season.

“We will start to have a stronger emphasis on our contested work, we will get a little bit more of that into our training, get a little bit more competitive with the drills that we do,” he said.

“We will start to have a much stronger focus on the intensity in terms of the drills that we are doing.

“We will make sure that we continue to top them up and get the work into them at the end of the session that we need to.”