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Power fitness guru Darren Burgess puts new Shark Shane Crawford through his paces

SHANE Crawford has gone straight to the best in the business as he prepares his 39-year-old body for its first game of football in six years.

SHANE Crawford has gone straight to the best in the business as he prepares his 39-year-old body for its first game of football in six years this weekend.

The Hawthorn premiership player and Brownlow Medallist met with Port Adelaide fitness coach Darren Burgess on Thursday ahead of his comeback with the Aldinga Sharks in the Southern Football League on Saturday.

Asked how Crawford should prepare for his first game after a six-year spell, Burgess said “you don’t.”

“There’s no preparation but I think he’s relying on muscle memory to come back and help him through it.

“It will be a stretch but I reckon it will come back to him. Give him about a quarter to ease into it, the next two he will be outstanding and the fourth he might die a bit.”

Crawford hasn’t played football since the 2008 AFL Grand Final triumph over Geelong and resisted offers from amateur and suburban clubs to lure him out of retirement — until now.

He is playing a one-off game for the struggling club after The Advertiser, Sunday Mail and Messenger’s “Spark the Sharks” campaign drew national attention to their plight.

“It would have been doing it for the wrong reasons, financially you could make some money out of it but I wanted to do it because I wanted to do it and not necessarily for other reasons,” Crawford said of resisting overtures to play local footy post his AFL career.

“It (Aldinga) was a good fit, a team needs a bit of a lift and worse case scenario if things don’t go perfectly I can add a little bit from a leadership point of view.”

The four-time All-Australian retired with dodgy knees and occasionally wakes up with a sore back but says overall his body is in good nick.

“A tight back every now and then and I had pretty bad knees when I finished, but they’re brand new so I’m pretty lucky,” he said.

Crawford also met with Power players Kane Mitchell, Lewis Stevenson and Mitch Harvey while he was at Alberton and also caught up with his 2008 premiership teammate Brent Renouf.

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Original URL: https://www.adelaidenow.com.au/sport/afl/local-footy-sa/power-fitness-guru-darren-burgess-puts-new-shark-shane-crawford-through-his-paces/news-story/4ef3adf02e1962c53f940cc0ce764981