Rugby World Cup 2015: Michael Cheika flogs Wallabies before departing to the US

WALLABIES players thought they were off for a light jog for their final training session, but they were wrong. A ferry ride and old-school flogging lay in wait in Manly.

TOLD to assemble in the foyer of their city hotel at 8am wearing joggers, Wallabies players thought they were going for a light run in the Botanic Gardens for their final pre-World Cup training session on home soil on Friday.

They were wrong.

Unknown to them, one of Michael Cheika’s special old-school sessions lay in wait — on the far side of Sydney Harbour.

A confused 31-man squad was jogged down to Circular Quay, where they boarded a Manly ferry.

After arriving on the northern beaches the squad ran around to Little Manly beach, where they promptly got flogged in an hour of gruelling conditioning.

EXPERIENCE: numbers that excite greybeard Wallabies

BONUS: Pocock and Beale re-sign with ARU

UK VIEW: Burgess, Lancaster’s biggest gamble

Michael Cheika (2nd from left) joined the Wallabies brutal final training season.

Cheika said on Thursday his medical staff had banned him from subjecting the squad to his beloved Coogee stairs session due to injury worries, but that he’d get around it somehow.

The “somehow” was hill sprints instead of stair sprints, and the group repeatedly belted up a steep 150m run on Marshall Street, which only slowed when a “car” call preceded a bemused driver rolling through on a cross street.

Cheika and other coaching staff didn’t just watch on; they joined the sprints too.

Players then went into a cross-training session in a nearby park, with wrestling and tug-of-war battles — interspersed with sprints.

Rob Horne and Kurtley Beale during a wrestling drill.

Drills on hills then followed, with intense clean-out work up a steep hill sapping the remaining strength from players’ legs.

A bracing recovery swim in Sydney Harbour at Little Manly then rounded out the session and brought down the curtain on a mostly brutal six-week block of training for the Wallabies ahead of their World Cup campaign kicking off in earnest.

“Cheik loves a hill,” a weary David Pocock said later.

“It is good. It is a good test, physically but also mentally. At this level, everyone is doing pretty similar training, everyone is fit, it really does come down to that mental toughness in the last 10-15 minutes.

“That is something as a group that we really are starting to see a bit of improvement in that area. That puts us in good stead going over to the World Cup.”

Wallabies perform uphill clean-out drills.

The Wallabies will depart on Saturday to the USA, where they’ll spend two weeks before jetting onwards to England to get their World Cup campaign underway.

A Test against the US Eagles in Chicago next Sunday morning will be their last hit-out before the Wallabies’ opening pool A clash against Fiii on September 23.

Pocock said players were keen to get down to business after a gruelling six weeks of hard training.

“It’s been a mini pre-season block, which is good,” he said.

“A lot of fitness based stuff, and then skills under fatigue, which is pretty realistic. It’s been a good opportunity for us, you don’t often get that opportunity as a Wallabies group; a period of time just slogging it out together. I think everyone is just pretty keen to get on that plane now, and get over and start playing some rugby.”

Originally published as Rugby World Cup 2015: Michael Cheika flogs Wallabies before departing to the US