JON Clarke believes the shape of the Warrington Wolves players upon their return to training says a lot about their standards.

The Wire’s head of strength and conditioning is pleased with the players’ starting point of preparations for 2017 upon regrouping, giving themselves a solid platform to build on a season that ended with appearances in two finals and the capturing of the League Leaders’ Shield.

He agrees commitment, dedication and determination to go one better are all on show, along with the understanding of what is needed.

“I think there’s an element of all that,” he said.

“Over the course of last year myself, Ben Stirling (head of performance services), Jake Batsford (first team and head of youth strength and conditioning) and James Morehen (nutritionist) tried to educate them rather than just tell them what to do.

“That’s education on the importance of training, the importance of nutrition, the importance of staying healthy and looking after injuries.

“And their knowledge in terms of what they should and shouldn’t be doing in and around training has increased massively over the past 12 months, so it’s no surprise to me that they’ve come back in what we feel is a lot better shape than this time last year so I’m made up with them.

“The other side of it is that we’ve had a small taste of success last season but still fallen short in two finals.That’s the harsh line.

“I think there’s a real determination among the group and the club too to go one better this year.”

The majority of players, including new signings Matty Blythe (Bradford), Dom Crosby (Wigan) and Andre Savelio (St Helens), are now in their second week of pre-season work under Clarke, who served Wolves as a hooker for 11 seasons and returned to the club last November after he finished his playing days - and started the conditioning chapter to his career - at Widnes Vikings.

Senior players and the coaching staff have commented on the huge impact he has made at the club over the past 12 months.

“We’d given the players a bit more break than we gave them last year, particularly the lads who played a lot of rugby,” said Clarke.

“We didn’t have a week off really, with reaching both finals.

“They’d had a long year and needed a good rest.”

“When I came in last year, we just started again. We went back to the drawing board, literally went back to complete foundations of strength and conditioning with them.

“And so over the pre-season and the course of last season we slowly tried to build them up into decent physical athletes.

“This year we feel we’re not starting again, that we’ve got decent foundations and that we can start to put the cream on top of some of the players. And we feel that we can be a bit more specific in terms of what players need.

“That said, there’s always an underpinning element of what you want.

“You want them strong, you want them a bit bigger and you want them a bit leaner – that’ll probably never change from every year you do it. We can certainly be a little bit more specific too in what we give them.”