Smith: Warriors an 80-minute team

He may not have seen the Warriors’ unbeaten start to the season coming – few people did.

But Melbourne Storm legend Cameron Smith had little doubt Stephen Kearney’s side would be competitive once they signed high performance guru Alex Corvo.

The Storm take on the Tigers on Saturday in the first game of the double-header at Mt Smart, which is followed by the Warriors’ clash against the Cowboys. Much has been made of the impact Corvo has had since arriving during the off-season, yet few know his training methods as intimately as Smith.

The Melbourne, Queensland and Australia captain spent the first 12 years of his career being worked into the ground by Corvo at the Storm.

And those gruelling preseason sessions still give him nightmares to this day.

‘‘Alex came down to Melbourne with Craig at the start of 2003 and some of those preseasons there were the hardest I’ve ever done in my career,’’ Smith said.

‘‘We do a different style of training now to what we used to, but I don’t think they’re as hard as what they were with Alex.

‘‘The one thing you were guaranteed to be was extremely fit, both physically and mentally, to start the season well and give yourself an opportunity to put your team in a really good position coming into the back-half of the year.’’

Smith said that as long as the players bought in to Corvo’s methods, the Warriors would reap the rewards.

And that has clearly been the case so far this season, with their all-round conditioning a highlight of the first four weeks.

‘‘For me looking outside in, they all look extremely fit,’’ Smith said. ‘‘You probably haven’t seen that from the Warriors in the past. They’ve always been very physical and skilful but sometimes can’t last the 80 minutes.

Corvo isn’t the only Melbourne connection at the Warriors – the Storm’s influence can been seen right throughout the Auckland outfit. Kearney, of course, won a grand final in Melbourne as a player before spending five years as assistant to coach Craig Bellamy.

Two of his three major player signings for 2018, Tohu Harris and Adam Blair, were developed in the Storm system, while the third, five-eighth Blake Green, spent two seasons in Melbourne in 2015-16.