Anis Mehmeti sets early score among Bristol City team-mates as Robins battle ‘horrible’ Bronco

Anis Mehmeti set the fastest time of any of his Bristol City team-mates in the pre-season Bronco test, also beating the fastest mark set by the Bristol Bears 24 hours earlier.

Mehmeti completed five repetitions of a set of 20m, 40m and 60m shuttles in 4:11 minutes, which took six seconds off Bears scrum-half Kieran Marmion as the Bears chased down the Barn Indoor Training Center at Abbots Leigh.

Elijah Morrison was second for City with Ayman Benarous third, Harry Cornick fourth and Adam Murphy fifth as the Robins ended their second day of pre-season testing with the lung-busting Bronco and the brutal

Popular in rugby union, it has been part of the Bears’ pre-season program for the past three years and now at City it has replaced the SDS test that players took last year when Nigel Pearson was in charge and Dave Rennie the boss. of medical. SDS is a development of the Yo-Yo and Bleep tests that were prevalent in previous pre-seasons.

All Black legend Beauden Barrett had the fastest time in world rugby for many years at 4:12, which has since been equaled by New Zealand scrum-half Cam Roigard, while Leinster and Ireland full-back Hugo Keenan would have posted a time of 4. :11.

The entire City squad was present at the Bears training ground with the exception of Tommy Conway, Ross McCrorie, Jason Knight and Max O’Leary due to their involvement with Scotland and the Republic of Ireland, while Nahki Wells was absent for personal reasons. Mark Sykes has also been given extra time off for being in the Ireland squad but has started his off-season work at HPC with his Bronco round still to come.

Rob Atkinson and Benarous, who missed last season with hamstring injuries while recovering from long-term ACL problems, also took part in the drill, along with new signings Max Bird and Josh Stokes plus youngsters Josey Casa-Grande , Morrison and arriving in January. Murphy, who ended last season as part of the Under-21 set-up.

Mehmeti crushed the field with his run, earning significant applause from the assembled Bears team watching from the high gallery and behind the glass panels of the gym, with Cornick posting the fastest time in the first group.

While he appears to be running for friendly competition, both within the team and against the Bears, the Bronco also allows the city’s medical team to assess exactly where each individual stands in terms of their fitness level before summer.

In addition, it also provides data to work with throughout the campaign if and when players need to resume training and suffer injuries, as it presents a baseline of each player’s aerobic limit.

“It’s awful,” said the city’s new chief medical officer, Paul Tanner. “Four or five minutes of running. It’s a maximum test, they have to empty the tank and go as far as they can. It just gives us a really good idea of ​​their maximum aerobic speed and capacity and allows us to be able to base a lot of our rehab runs and analyze the data.

“But for boys, it’s awful. There was quite a bit of nervous energy around the place this morning and the players were worried that they would have to post better scores than the rugby lads but they did very well and to be fair to all the lads they I got them back. , they all came back in very good physical shape, so we are very pleased.”

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