Veteran NRL fitness guru Ronnie Palmer has played major part in a training and game preparation revolution
From the 1980s when ‘there was limited time for what you could actually do’ to today’s state-of-the-art approach, Ronnie Palmer has been part of a training and game preparation revolution.
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Training rugby league players has become an art and a science - and nobody understands that better than Ronnie Palmer.
Palmer has been training first grade players since the mid 1980s and has been a first-hand witness to the incredible transformation of footballers from part-time players to the world-class athletes we know today.
“These blokes would come covered in brick dust and go out and train their hearts out,” Palmer said.
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“There was limited time for what you could actually do. There was weights, conditioning and skills, but that was all we had time for.
“We would try and jam a few weights into the blokes who got there earlier than others.
Mike McLean and Trevor Gillmiester were two standouts in those days, as was veteran Steve “Slippery” Morris, but perhaps the best was Kiwi legend Hugh McGahan.
“Hughie was like a professional even though we weren’t professional at the time,” Palmer said.
“He was very fastidious with the way we went about it.”
McGahan was a Golden Boot winner and widely acclaimed as one of the best forwards in the world of his time. He weighed in at 90kg — compare that to the pick of the modern day forwards, Tongan colossus Jason Taumalolo (117kg) and it’s like looking at players from two different sports.
It’s not a truly fair comparison - McGahan never had the training advantages available to Taumalolo — but it’s a measure of how far the sport has come.
“You couldn’t compare the athlete of today with the athlete of the 80s or 90s, they’re totally different now,” Palmer said.
“They couldn’t get the recovery in because they had to get up and go to work the next day, or if they weren’t in a team that was fulltime, they wouldn’t get the chance to do weights four times a week, or do speed sessions or recovery, and all that sort of stuff.
“The athletes we have today, we have them 24/7 and whenever we need them we can bring them in. That’s their job, they’re fulltime athletes.”
The journey from McGahan to Taumalolo began when Canberra became the first team to go fulltime under Tim Sheens in 1989.
“The old Green Machine with their magic milk down there, and the Broncos, they were pretty into sports science - not as elaborate as it was in the 2000s, but they were into testing and the importance of recovery,” Palmer said.
“That’s become crucial in our modern game because the athletes have gotten faster and bigger and stronger and that’s something you have to take care of now.”
The Roosters went fulltime once Phil Gould arrived in 1995 and under Ricky Stuart in the early 2000s they became known for their incredible conditioning and resilience, and helped set the new standard for physical fitness in the top grade.
“Ricky loved to have a super fit team. From the kick off, we would be in people’s faces,” Palmer said.
“Because of our fitness we would be able to repeat the efforts with our defensive line, and be lightning fast. In those times the beep test was one of the go-to things to see what the status of your fitness was.
“We had Craig Wing, Craig Fitzgibbon, Luke Ricketson, all of these fellas who were super fit and all eight of our top forwards would do level 14 on the beep test, which is quite unheard of.
“We had a super fit squad that was able to dominate through being fit, and turning up all the time throughout the game.”
Since then, the approach has become even more refined. It is not enough to flog players on the training paddock and have them through around massive weights in the gym - the approach has become extremely specific, and tailored to each players individual needs.
What hasn’t changed is the attitude Palmer, now with the Tigers, requires from his players - if anything, the modern player must be even more committed than his bygone counterpart.
“I’ve got a little saying for the fellas about attitude and that’s attitude never takes a day off, and these fellas can’t take a day off.”
Originally published as Veteran NRL fitness guru Ronnie Palmer has played major part in a training and game preparation revolution