THE Bulls have gone back to basics as they brace themselves for Championship rugby.

Pre-season preparation has begun with the return to Tong for the opening phase of the build-up to next year.

Gym work and weight training will feature heavily in the early sessions under the close eye of coaches Leigh Beattie and Mark Dunning and head of strength and conditioning Adam Simpson.

But there is also a focus on sharpening up the core rugby skills ahead of the step-up in class the Bulls are about to encounter.

Coach John Kear, who is back with the squad next week, said: “There’s an element of conditioning with regards to weight training and a certain amount of aerobic work.

“But what we do when they first come back is go through some basic skills.

“Leigh and Mark will be having a look at that to enhance the players. It’s real simple skills such as the pass, the catch, the play-the-ball, the tackle technique.

“We strip it right back to basics for the first three weeks or so.”

Kear insists it is all about the little percentages in games that can make the difference. The players are receptive to sharpening up the basic areas in their performance.

“You can always get better,” he added. “If we’re trying to play the ball quickly, the opposition will be trying to slow you down.

“So, what you try to do is give yourself little tips. Obviously, it’s a very basic skill, a schoolboy can play a ball, but a schoolboy can’t play it as quickly as a league professional player.

“It’s that little half second, those little nuances where you place the ball, where you put your foot. You can dissect it to the minutest detail to make us that little bit better and that’s what we’re trying to do.

“For example, we’ll have our left wing and our left centre practising left-to-right doing half passes.

“That’s simply because occasionally when you’re tackled down the left-hand side and the dummy half can’t get there, they’ve got to execute a good pass.

“That’s one of the things I feel where we are not as efficient as we should be.

“It’s one basic skill that we will be practising and it’s position specific.

“It’s the same with dummy halves. I feel we have dummy halves who might be a little better should they learn to kick out of dummy half because it gives us another option.

“I think it’s imperative that they do these basic skills because they get more efficient at them. The greater the efficiency, the greater their execution.”