Search icon

Sport

22nd Feb 2018

This toughest drill the Irish rugby team does sounds disgusting

Alan Loughnane

Nope, happy enough never to do that…

Tadhg Furlong was a guest on The Hard Yards rugby podcast this week and was in flying form when we spoke to him.

He spoke at length about growing up down in Wexford in a wide-ranging interview.

But one thing he spoke about was some of the toughest drills he has done during his time in Ireland camp from the 54:00 mark below, and we have to say, it sounds disgustingly difficult.

 

 

 

 

In case you don’t have time to listen to it now, here’s a quick rundown of what he said.

“When I first came in,” Furlong says, “we used to do something called ‘150s’ out in Santry. They were miserable.

“It sort of changes over the years. We got into yo-yos [shuttle runs] for a while. Then we got into a 1-kilometre test at the start of pre-season. Now it’s called The Bronco.”

“A lot of the provinces now do it but Charlie Higgins, our strength an conditioning coach [at Leinster], brought it in from Australia.

“It’s a series of shuttle runs and I think it adds up to be 1.2k in the end. That’s pretty miserable, to be honest with you. It’s a bit about speed, accelerating, decelerating and being able to hold that over a period of time.

“It’s out 20, back, out 40, back, out 60, back… five times in a row.

“It’s about being able to hold that speed and cover that distance as well.”