Tackle Count: Why the Breakfast Club works for this NRL club

It's the "wild concept" of NRL squad mates actually knowing each other. Not as players who wear certain colours but as people.

Mitch Jennings from the Illawarra Mercury spoke to Kaide Ellis at pre-season training about the Dragons progress under new coach Anthony Griffin.

The pair have worked together before, at Penrith, so Ellis was not new to the concept of "the breakfast club".

"Once a week he'd put you in groups, young and old mixed together, leave your phones at home, go for brekky and a coffee for an hour just to get away from training and learn about one another. If you're caught with you phone it's your shout and there's a lot of tight arses here.

"When you're [at training] it's all on, it's all about footy, you don't get a spare five minutes to get to know someone. It brings you closer together if you can go and have a coffee with someone away from the club you're not thinking 'oh I don't really know him'," Ellis said.

Dragons winger Jordan Pereira also reckons the new approached has changed the vibe at off-season training.

"It's something I've noticed that probably hasn't been here in the past. Sometimes you'd walk in and know there was a hard day ahead of us and you wouldn't even say hello to people because you were so daunted by the day ahead. Now, we're just excited to get after it and it's contagious."

* This edition of Tackle Count was written by Janine Graham.

The footy news you can't afford to miss