Warrington Wolves captain Chris Hill says he is looking forward to the challenges next year will bring

Next season will be long and testing, potentially not ending until the first weekend of December for those international players involved in the World Cup Final at Brisbane Stadium in Australia.

The work to get his body ready for the vigours to come starts now.

As well as much-needed rest, Hill, whose 2016 season only ended at the weekend with England’s exit from the Ladbrokes Four Nations tournament in a 36-18 loss to Australia, will be having hernia and shoulder operations.

His return to work is scheduled for January on a training camp with the national team.

It means that his 2017 preparations with The Wire will not commence in earnest until a few days later on the club’s warm-weather training camp in Tenerife.

He will go into the new year without the benefit of the pre-season training and conditioning programmes that the majority of the competition’s players will have been following for six weeks or so.

Before the additional demands of next year’s World Cup, the domestic programme is loaded with an extra double-header weekend round of fixtures, an international match against Samoa in Australia in May and the World Club Series date with Brisbane Broncos in February.

Other England international players face similar tough schedules but Hill, playing the sport’s most demanding position at prop, will go into all of that having not missed a club or international game since July, 2014.

Despite a lot being expected of elite rugby league professionals, Hill swears he would not want it any other way.

“You give your body a week off and it’s ready to go again. That’s just the way it is and the lads will thrive on what’s to come,” said the 29-year-old, who recently extended and improved terms with Wolves until the end of 2021.

“There’s an England training camp at the start of the year, then there’s a Warrington training camp, then there’s a mid-season Test pencilled in for England.

“You get used to it, and you love it – you enjoy it, I wouldn’t want it any other way including playing for England as well which is a massive part of me playing rugby league. I always love pulling the England shirt on.

“It will be an even longer year next year with the World Cup over in Australia being up to five weeks long. The final is the first weekend in December, so it’s a long year.

“We just embrace it and I can’t wait, if I am part of the World Cup squad, to be over there doing it.

“You get on with it, your body gets used to it and as we won’t be able to do it for the rest of our lives my view is to enjoy it while you can.”

Rest, both physical and mental, will be the order of the day for Hill in the coming weeks.

“I’ll probably nip in around Christmas time, see our boys, probably throw a few weights around because you want to get straight back into it and get that feeling back,” he said.

“Once you get that feeling back it’s hard to go and relax again because you want to get straight back into it.

“It’ll be the Tenerife camp when I initially get back into it with Wolves, which will be nice. With the sun on your back, it makes it a little bit easier.

“But don’t worry about catching up. I’m sure Clarkey (Jon Clarke, Wolves’ head of strength and conditioning) will get plenty of conditioning into us in Tenerife. We’ll probably have plenty of conditioning with England too.

“You have to watch what you eat over Christmas so that you don’t come back a little bit underdone. But all the lads are sensible, as they should be because it’s our job.”

Hill was joined in England’s loss to the Kangaroos by 2017 teammate Mike Cooper, but hooker Daryl Clark was left out by head coach Wayne Bennett to allow for a third half back (George Williams) on the bench.