They did a similar thing to Browny before the 2004 GF. I believe he had a crack in his femur bone. They really put him through the paces in the fitness test and Browny reckons he ended up worse off because of it and had to load up on pain killers for a shot at the glory of 4 premierships in a row. I truly believe if we had a fully fit team in the 2004 GF and played the prelim at the Gabba our premiership heroes would have 4 premierships next to their namesYeah. I think the medical advice (to him) was NOT to play but he insisted he was OK.
From memory, they got someone in the team to repeatedly crash tackled him at Lions training the day before the GF to "test" the ribs.
It may have been one of the Scott brothers?.....I guess the thinking was that if you could survive one of those buggers hammering you at training, you could survive anything.
Pretty sure they still had to soup him up on pain killers on GF day so he could get through it.