Every Friday morning for the last two months of 2024, the entry in the Waratahs training diary was relatively simple.
Combat session, 6.30am, Botany.
Players soon came to understand a more accurate description of it: turn up to a wrestling dojo and smash the living daylights out of each other.
Social media clips of the brutal contact sessions that have since spun around the world give a clear insight into how the Waratahs under new coach Dan McKellar plan to go about their business in 2025.
“We want to be a team who is chock-full of fight, you know?” McKellar said. “And you can’t hide in those sessions, so you learn a lot about character.”
The Waratahs are now enjoying the temporary respite of a Christmas break after an intensive first eight weeks under McKellar, who took over the team after their wooden-spoon finish in the 2024 season.
Dan McKellar talks to his players at Waratahs pre-season training.Credit: Hugo Carr/NSW Waratahs
With a new coaching staff of Mike Catt, Locky McCaffrey and Dan Palmer at his side, McKellar has put the Waratahs squad through the usual gruelling summer training routines of daily running, strength and skill sessions to build up player conditioning step by step.
Those parts are familiar enough, but the injection of weekly contact and conditioning sessions at the Gracie Jiu-Jitsu studio in Botany has raised the eyebrows of hopeful Waratahs’ fans – and even rival teams.
The sessions are run by experienced wrestling and contact coach Steve Babic, who was a long-time staffer for the Canberra Raiders and worked with the Brumbies when McKellar was coaching in the ACT. Babic also works with Wests Tigers.
Split into two hour-long sessions with forwards and backs, Waratahs players do wrestling and conditioning drills before finishing with barefooted “bone-on-bone” tackling sessions on gym mats, where – on the evidence of several videos posted on the Waratahs’ social media – players don’t hold back an inch in intensity and aggression.
Steve Babic oversees the Waratahs in the Botany dojo.Credit: Hugo Carr/NSW Waratahs
“On social media there is only a small snap of what we do in a 60-minute session,” McKellar said. “So it’s not 60 minutes of that bone-on-bone, just bashing each other.
“I have worked closely with Steve Babic for five or six years now, and there’s a technical element to it, around our tackle technique; there’s a conditioning element around contact conditioning; and then discipline and resilience. I am not one to go on army camps and sleep for a couple of hours and live off tins of tuna and lose a stone, and all the gains you make go out the window really quick.
“For me it’s little and often, and again, the players have bought into it.
“It’s early on a Friday morning, so just to get yourself up for a session, you require a bit of resilience there before you even make a tackle.
“‘Babbs’ has been effective for me in the past. Everyone does a whole lot of running condition, but for me, the really fit teams are the ones who can get off the ground quickly, the teams who can go from one collision to the next and still feel fresh in the last 10 minutes.”
The clips have been picked up and debated by rugby sites in Britain and Europe, and even the social media account of the reigning Super Rugby champion side, the Blues, replied to one post on Instagram: “Damn”.
Waratahs players work on tackle technique at the sessions.Credit: Hugo Carr/NSW Waratahs
But as much as the sessions are designed to develop conditioning and commitment, McKellar has been using bash-up Friday to also learn about the all-important character of his players.
“Who is looking for a gentleman’s agreement? Who wants to partner up with a mate?” McKellar said.
“I am looking for who to compete and who wants to fight, and who is really hungry to earn a jersey for February 14 [the Waratahs’ first game against the Highlanders], and it gives you good insight, for sure.”
Whether the intense dojo sessions will translate to a grittier Waratahs defence – and overall attitude – this year remains to be seen, but already players are reporting a tougher environment under new coach McKellar and his Brumbies-flavoured coaching team.
The focus on physicality and intensity at the Brumbies training sessions have, unsurprisingly, made their way up to NSW as well.
Jack Bowen scores during the Waratahs’ last game in the 2024 season.Credit: Getty Images
“I am not sure what the culture was like previously. I guess I can only talk to what we are about now. I am big on standards and discipline, and knowing what we stand for as a team, and being really clear on our identity. The what we are and how we go about it. And we just drive that from one day to the next.
“But I am also big on fun. You have to have a laugh. You have to be enjoying it whenever you get the opportunity to. It is not like we are just here hitting them with a sledgehammer every day. We need to make sure we enjoy coming to work.”
The Waratahs’ nine Wallabies players who went on the Spring Tour are on mandated leave until mid-January, but many have already begun dropping into Waratahs headquarters at Daceyville, not wanting to drift too far out of sight or mind.
“Players talk to each other, and they will have seen the dojo sessions,” McKellar said.
“But they’re professional, and they understand to get away from rugby and meetings and that bone-on-bone contact. But you still have to train, don’t you? Their body is their Formula One car, and they need to look after it and keep it well-tuned.
“It’s good for those boys to be away, going on those Spring Tours are special trips. I know, talking to the players, that they really enjoyed the experience, and they will be better for it, being away in that environment and that program that joe has put together with his staff. So they’ll be better for it.”
