KNIGHTS utlity Kurt Mann has revealed the extraordinary measures he took over the pre-season to give himself the best opportunity to nail down a regular position for the first time in his NRL career.
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Mann has been named as lock for Saturday's season-opener against Sydney Roosters, in what will be his 150th top-grade appearance.
The 29-year-old Queenslander is one of the game's most versatile players, having spent time at fullback, wing, centre, five-eighth, halfback, hooker and interchange handyman since debuting in the NRL with Melbourne in 2014.
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Now he hopes to settle into a ball-playing "small lock" role and establish himself there for the remainder of his career.
To prepare for the extra defence around the middle of the ruck, Mann realised he needed to bulk up and has been adhering to a high-calorie diet, in which he was consuming almost double the recommended calorie intake for a nomal adult male.
That enabled him to upsize from 86 kilograms to 91 kilograms.
"Diet was the big thing for me," Mann told the Newcastle Herald. "I was eating close to 5000 calories a day there for a while. That was when I was trying to gain weight.
"I was eating a lot of food.
"It was pretty exhausting at times.
"You'd eat dinner, and then have another dinner, and then have dessert after it.
"It worked. I was putting on about 500 grams a week at one stage.
"I think some of the bigger boys would like to have the same problem as me. They'd love that."
Mann said most of the food was healthy but his dietitian allowed an open-slather approach to dessert.
The dietitian didn't really care what I ate for dessert, so I was getting pretty extravagant and splurging," he said.
"He was happy with that, because my metabolism and body composition was fine at the time. Our training loads were massive, so it wasn't going to go anywhere bad, just from our workload."
Mann moved from Winton, in Queensland, as a 17-year-old to join the Knights but then had stints with Melbourne and St George Illawarra, before re-joining Newcastle in 2019, stringing together 61 games in the past three seasons.
"I probably wouldn't have played in 150 games if I hadn't been able to play in so many different positions," Mann said.
"So I'm definitely grateful for being able to do that, but I would like to nail down one position and work on that."
"That's what I'm aiming for this year, to settle in at lock and make that my own."
He said his job will be to play as a "fourth half" or link man. "My role is to give the ball to the players who need it at the right time," he said.
"It seemed to work well for us in the trials."
Mann had no qualms with the extra tackling he would need to make, defending in the middle of the ruck.
"I'm still defending in the middle, and that's fine," he said.
"I've played a bit of hooker, and some lock when I was at the Dragons, and I think one of the stronger parts of my game is my defence."
