Every Friday morning for the last two months of 2024, the entry in the Waratahs training diary was relatively simple.
Combat session, 6.30am, Botany.
Players soon came to understand a more accurate description of it: turn up to a wrestling dojo and smash the living daylights out of each other.
Social media clips of the brutal contact sessions that have since spun around the world give a clear insight into how the Waratahs under new coach Dan McKellar plan to go about their business in 2025.
“We want to be a team who is chock-full of fight, you know?” McKellar said. “And you can’t hide in those sessions, so you learn a lot about character.”
The Waratahs are now enjoying the temporary respite of a Christmas break after an intensive first eight weeks under McKellar, who took over the team after …