SO. You wanna play for Craig Bellamy?

Then drop and give us 1000.

There will be no talking on your 3am leisurely stroll around the track carting a 20 kilo pack. No finish time in sight either.

Oh and mind the terrorists. Let the buggers slip by on your watch and it’s game over.

Round 19

Melbourne’s pre-season boot camps are infamous for breaking players down, and famed for building champion sides.

It’s how Bellamy sorts the Storm wannabes from the gonnabes.

He’s been sending his charges to hell and back every year he has been at the club, the three-day exercises in torture designed to reveal exactly what the players are capable of: for coach and team alike.

But at the end of 2015 Bellamy gave it to his squad — the youngest he has ever coached — straight up.

They weren’t mentally tough enough to win an NRL premiership.

Which made the last three days of Melbourne’s 2015 campaign more important than ever.

‘THREE DAYS OF HELL’

Dale ‘Kaos’ Finucane is one of the game’s more rough and ready customers.

He arrived at Melbourne in 2015 already included in the club’s emerging leadership group, having played two grand finals with Canterbury and had the old ‘made for Origin’ tag all but stamped on his forehead.

But he also arrived at the Storm in January.

Which meant come late December last year, while the rest of us were dreaming of Christmas prawns and pork by the pallet, Finucane was sitting alongside 15 other recruits, youngsters and 32-year-old, 150-gamer Matt White.

Each of them with a pack, a number instead of a name, and more nerves than a long tailed tom cat in a room full of rocking chairs.

“It was the toughest thing I’ve done. Both physically and mentally,” Finucane tells foxsports.com.au.

“I think over the course of the three days I had less than 10 minutes sleep from Thursday to Saturday.

“I lost about 5-6 kilos … and a bit of my mind.”

FUN AND GAMES

The first day starts with an old fashioned physical slog.

Literally, a tonne of push ups, in lots of 50. Running, sit ups, fireman’s carries, fun stuff with the old Navy style ropes.

Then the mental games start.

“There were these bloody rocks,” Finucane says.

“We had to pick them up and move them about 10 metres away. You get back on the bus, and this pretend phone call comes through.

“‘The rocks need to be moved back.’

“So we turn around, as soon as we get out of there, go back and move three tonne worth of rocks for a few hours.

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“And the sleep deprivation as well. There was a silent race, where you’re just walking as quickly as you could with your 20 kilo pack.

“But we weren’t told how long we were racing for. We ended up going for around three hours around a 400-500m circuit.

“This is at about 3am in the morning by the way.

“After that we waited in the bush for about another three hours, standing guard for terrorists.

“If anyone came past you had to sing out ‘halt, who goes there’, to acknowledge that you’d caught them. Otherwise you’d fallen asleep and you were in a lot of trouble.”

MAKE OR BREAK

Cameron Smith nails home a matchwinning field goal against the Cowboys. Source: News Corp Australia

All the while Bellamy is watching. Using the camp for more than just sadistic jollies. Using it as a yardstick.

Just as he sends juniors at the club for two-week stints on building sites, Bellamy “pops up when you’d least expect him” throughout the ordeal, checking in on exactly what type of character is revealed.

In his 2013 book Home Truths, Bellamy wrote: “What happens in that camp and how certain players react to tough situations under fatigue and distress, usually applies to what happens on the field.”

Skipper Cam Smith sees the rewards being reaped right there as well, on the field.

“Last year we had young guys come in and out of our first grade side, and they’d play extremely well for one week or two weeks, but then go missing for a couple,” Smith says.

“Craig just touched on having a mentally tough team. Across the board he didn’t believe that we were a mentally tough team.

“He thought he needed a few things to change, which we certainly did across the preseason with a few things to toughen the boys up.

“The young guys they trained particularly hard and got everything done that they were asked to do and now those guys are playing ultra-consistent.”

Last week Bellamy could not recall being more proud of his side than after their one-point win over reigning premiers North Queensland.

The strides taken by Bellamy’s younger contingent explain that statement. In 2015 Melbourne dropped six games against teams in sitting 15th and 16th on the ladder — a thoroughly unwanted NRL record.

In 2016 they’re knocking off frontrunners like the Cowboys, but also gritting their teeth through ugly wins over the Knights and Tigers.

It’s the mark of a mentally tough side. A Craig Bellamy side.

‘YOU DO GO BACK THERE’

Dale Finucane (left) Cameron Smith (centre) and Jesse Bromwich celebrate a Storm try. Source: News Corp Australia

These days 33-year-old Smith leaves the rocks and mind games to the kids. He assures us he gets flogged enough on the paddock.

But he hasn’t forgotten it.

“You get pushed to places that you’ve never been before, and places that you didn’t think you could take your body to,” Smith says.

“And yeah I’ve had that a few times in games, absolutely. I’ve never forgotten it.

“It’s all up here. Physically, what stops you is your mind. Telling yourself that you can’t go further or you can’t go harder.

“When you do get into those tough times in games, you think to yourself ‘I’ve done something harder than this and I got through it, I’ll get through this game.’”

Finucane sings from the same hymn sheet.

“Because it’s the toughest thing I’ve done, it is something you look back on and reflect on,” he says.

Like Smith he expects to use the experience when it’s time for the toughest to get going.

It’s why Bellamy first chased him in 2011, when he was still coming through the Bulldogs under 20s ranks.

Four years later he brought Finucane to Melbourne with him already pencilled into the Storm’s emerging leaders’ group, who expect to come to the fore when Smith and Cronk are away on Origin duty.

And just like Smith, he’s happy to rule himself out of Bellamy’s famed bootcamps.

“You’re only meant to do one,” Finucane says.

“But then they have done team ones before too. I think I’m safe ... I hope. I wouldn’t recommend it.”

The writer is on Twitter: @dan_walsh64

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