Adelaide young gun Ebony Marinoff has taken out the side’s pre-season Yo-Yo test for the second year running in a grueling training session for the Crows on Monday night.

The 21-year-old was one of three last women standing alongside Angela Foley and rookie Maisie Nankivell in a test that saw 19 players produce personal best performances.

The test marked the side’s third session of 2019 after returning from Christmas break last Thursday.

“We had a pretty solid skills and conditioning program to follow over the break which resulted in most of the girls recording a PB in the test,” Marinoff said.

“I’m pretty competitive and I like to be there until the end, so I ran hard tonight and ended up finishing as last ones standing with Maisie, our netball recruit, and Ange Foley.”

This pre-season, Physical Performance Coach Brad Newton made the decision to remove the traditional 2km time trial from the program and stick with just the Yo-Yo test.

“Given the short length of pre-season, having a new coach, list changes and needing to learn a new game plan, we identified that we couldn’t afford to lose a football session as we would have had to go to SANTOS to complete it and the following session would then be compromised,” he said.

“Not doing it meant we had more time for the girls to focus on their craft and skill development.”

In his experience, Newton said he had found the Yo-Yo test to be more specific to AFL.

“It involves an acceleration, deceleration, change of direction, re-acceleration and rest period, and replicates the style of work efforts seen in match play,” he said.

“It also removes any issues girls may have with pacing (unlike the 2km time trial), as it is an incrementally paced aerobic fitness test. This innately increases the accuracy of the test, removing any outliers from poor pacing.”

For Marinoff, completing a Yo-Yo test was more likely to push her to her limits than a time trial.

“With a time trial, you can finish and think ‘I could have run that faster’ but with a Yo-Yo you’ve got coaches on the sidelines warning you when you’re about to be knocked out and spurring you on,” she said.

“Now we just can’t wait to play footy next weekend.”

Adelaide will train at West Lakes on Wednesday night before heading to Darwin for its pre-season camp and trial match against Fremantle next weekend.