North Melbourne players are put through their paces. Picture: Michael Klein Source: News Corp Australia “I think we were just a bit off last year with conditioning – as a young group we need to build the tanks.
“I know Clarko’s done Kokoda in the past, so I’m hoping he doesn’t do three weeks of Kokoda down into three days.”
The Roos aren’t the only club determined to turn around their fitness, after Essendon’s internal review found their players needed to improve training standards in 2023.
Larkey said the Kangaroos had already come “leaps and bounds” from Clarkson’s first day in November in regards to the game plan – after former coach David Noble copped plenty of criticism for the difficulty of his in 2022.
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“I grew up a massive Hawks fan – to think (Clarkson’s) coaching me now is unbelievable,” Larkey laughed.
“You just take his word as gospel really.
“He’s got a real way with explaining things … it’s easy to understand.
“How simply he puts it – the concepts aren’t dramatically complex or anything.
Coach Alastair Clarkson at the club’s pre-season camp. Picture: Brad Fleet Source: News Corp Australia “We’ve already come leaps and bounds so far and it’s only been a couple of weeks.”
Larkey’s comments come after former coach David Noble announced his new career path – as CEO for Shell Racing.
Noble admitted he had met with the AFL over the general manager role made vacant after Brad Scott’s appointment as Essendon coach.
But the former Roos coach said the timing wasn’t right as he took the Supercars spot instead.
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“I had a chat to Gil (McLachlan) and Andrew Dillon in regards to the GM role vacated by Scotty – that was certainly a discussion I’d had, but the owners here (at Shell) were a fair way down the path with me at that time,” he said on SEN.
“The window had just opened with Gil extending and staying on for a bit, just as that window opened for the process with how they’d run (the GM job hunt), I was 95 per cent probably down the path (with Shell).”
Noble said it took around eight weeks for him to officially commit to the role at Shell, but he was excited for the change.
