'Boot camp' preparation reaps the rewards for Sarries

Yesterday we saw something of the old Saracens, the team I arrived at two years ago. It was the best performance we've put in for almost two years. We put in a fine all-round showing against Bristol, the forwards won us a lot of ball, Andy Goode played a super game, and the backs put in their tackles. We rode our luck and got over the Bristol pressure early on to end up with five tries, and on the top of the table.

I got my try as well: a good shift of the ball down the back line, a wide pass from Goode, and I was in paradise. All I had to do was run in, and make sure I didn't drop the ball on the way. I've scored harder tries, but that was probably one of the most significant.

I'd have got a second at the end, but someone held me back by the jersey. I was going to wallop him, but I realised it was a forward, so I held off. There was no pain anywhere in my body, I managed the full 80 minutes plus, and that's the best sign of all.

Bristol was where it all started to get serious for Sarries, but we've been hard at it since mid-July in what was the toughest build-up to any season that any one of us can remember. For three weeks we were getting up every day at 6.30am, doing three training sessions a day. The training in itself wasn't that hard - weights, gymwork, running - but the repeated efforts were. Let's just say we weren't up for going out in the evenings, and I had no time to show Christian Califano the sights of London.

The toughest part was five days in an army training ground at Aldershot in the first week of August, and not just because I was sharing a room with Abdel Benazzi, who snores like an ox. I have never experienced anything like Aldershot. I lost all sense of time because of doing the exercises until we were told to stop. We'd do strange things, like 10 or 15 minutes in the press-up position without moving, or carrying a heavy bit of wood for kilometres, and the infamous race 10 times up a five-metre rope. I managed to beat my hero Tim Horan at this, which is as good as I can hope for as I doubt if I'll win the World Cup twice like he has.

After exercising ourselves to exhaustion, there would be the mental tests, stuff like getting a team of us across a river using a few things to make a bridge. We were split into two teams a good deal of the time, taking it in turns to be the captain so that we all got to work on our leadership. It was another incentive to keep going - you learn that if you're in charge, you can't just give in when it's hard.

By the end of it, I felt like a machine. I'd lost all my ability to think. Looking back now, it's hard to believe that I got through it. But there was a rationale to it all, even if it might not have seemed that way at first.

Going to the camp was about being forced to go beyond our limits. It doesn't matter how tired we may be on a rugby pitch this winter, but we'll never be as tired as we were there.

I learned more about my team mates in five days than in the previous two years - and I have far greater belief in the power of the British army.

It was worth all the pain for the feeling we had on Sunday. It's a long road this season, but when there's a long way to go, you need the best start you can get.

Morale is high. We've had to go back to point zero and start again from nothing, we've worked hard for six weeks, so the least you can say is that we all deserve something for our efforts. Now we just have to rest up and get ready for our next opponents Bath, who will be on a roll as well.