WHEN Wolves went into the festive friendly with Widnes Vikings in a “tired” state, an army camp experience before Christmas had played a part.

“Never again” was among the players’ comments after around 21 draining hours of slogging logs about, running up and down Yorkshire’s peaks – and doing so mostly in the dark, in non-stop rain and with little to no sleep or food.

But the players and coaches reported there was also a real sense of achievement for having completing the ordeal.

“I was on the camp, but wish I wasn’t,” quipped 19-year-old new signing Luis Johnson, who made his Wire debut in the 26-22 loss to Widnes at the Halton.

“It’s the hardest thing I’ve ever done.

“The main thing we probably got out of it was to believe in ourselves.

“We got to a few stages where I thought I wanted to put my hand up and go home.

“But a few of the lads, like Mike Cooper and Jack Hughes, were making sure I didn’t quit, pulling me to one side, helping me out, helping me get up the hill because I was struggling a bit.

“You could tell who the senior players were. They were stepping up – with their talk and actions, helping all the young lads out especially.

“If someone paid me to do it next week, I don’t think I’d do it.”

Getting his breath back outside the changing rooms at Widnes he added: “The night we got home I slept 15 hours. My mum said I passed out and I woke up about 10.30am the next day. I don’t think I’ve fully recovered from it to be fair.”

England Academy international Johnson reflected further on the camp that led into the players’ Christmas break.

“We got there about 11am and did some team bonding stuff, putting up a gazebo,” he said.

“We had to put up a gazebo for our bags and stuff that was already wet because it was raining. It took us about an hour to do that,” he said.

“Then they said we’d do a little warm-up. That warm-up was two hours of bear crawls, army crawls and that kind of stuff.

“And then in groups we started carrying massive logs to the peaks. The first peak took about five hours to do.

“We got about 50 metres from the top and it was too dangerous because it was quite late at night and it was raining. So we had to come all the way back down, do a different route, and take all the stuff back to the gazebo.

“Then we had to run seven miles with one of the military guys. That was walking and jogging, but his walk was our jog so we were constantly jogging. After a few miles all the lads had split up into different groups.

“That lasted for about three hours, just in the middle of nowhere on a road.

“We got to about 2am and they said we’re going to do the second peak now. All the lads looked at each other saying “We’ve got nothing left”.

“That took about five hours and we got back at 7am.

“It had got to about -5 degrees at the top of the hills. And it wouldn’t stop raining. Some of the lads didn’t have waterproofs on, and we didn’t get to change clothes all day. We were covered in everything and everyone had blisters. It was just really hard. We’ve never done anything like it before.

“I was falling all the time. Toby King missed about three steps coming down at one point.

“It was pitch black and rocks everywhere, so there were quite a few scary moments. You had to watch your step.

“We were only given a pack of rice to eat for the whole day, so that was really hard.

“They said we’d be waking up at 8.30am but no-one wanted to put the tents up at that point. Half of us just laid on each other’s bags, because there was only six chairs.

“We didn’t really sleep, we were outside ready for the third hill. Everybody’s hearts just sunk really.

“We ran about 50 metres and they told us we were done, the camp was finished. And all the lads were celebrating like we’d won a game. After that we went to a pub, had a pint, and then went home.”