The Greater Western Sydney Giants made the Blue Mountains their home for a few days for essential pre-season training.
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Giants head coach Adam Kingsley said the squad sweated it out in the Mountains at the end of January and went through several gruelling challenges - hiking, abseiling and mountain bike riding.
He hopes the three-day training camp will be the boost the tight-knit squad needs to boost their chances of success in the 2024 Toyota AFL premiership season.
"The combination of hard work and a bit of fun is always important on these sort of camps. It's been a really, really good camp and we've had a lot of fun but certainly a lot of hard work has gone into it," he told media.
"You struggle to find anything like this [the Blue Mountains] as close as we are in any city around Australia so for us to be able to jump on the highway and come up, a short drive, and spend three days up here we are quite lucky to have that opportunity and we've really enjoyed it."
Kingsley said a highlight of the camp was a 25km hike.
"Spending six, seven, eight hours walking together and just having a chat, you feel a bit closer and get closer connections and it was really good in the end.
"The Blue Mountain hikes are unbelievably stunning and for our players to be able to spend really the whole day doing that, seeing the views and looking at the beauty of the landscape was great for them and great for us, but it's hard too.
"There's certainly a few challenging uphill stairs that got the heart rate rising so it was really good and I think our players got a lot out of it."
The season opener is against Collingwood on March 9.
