After completing their first testing day of the year, the Gold Coast SUNS male Academy is now gearing up for the five-match Academy Series taking place in April.

Academy Head Coach Andrew Raines spoke to SUNS TV at Saturday’s talent weekend where members of the Academy were tested on their agility, vertical leap, sprinting and endurance.

“They’ve had a full preseason so up to about now they’ve completed a whole summer full of football training, some education stuff in terms of their nutrition, professionalism and game plan,” Raines said.

“Outside football we implemented their program, on Saturday’s and a weekend we’ve either been mixing it up to have a beach run and work on their endurance or in recent times honing in on our game style and some match simulation.

“It’s not all about football, some of these guys will go out to play the highest level but a lot won’t so it’s really important that we educate them in those areas for life after football.”

With the testing wrapped up and the Academy Series just over a month away, Raines has switched his attention to preparing his squad to face teams from the other AFL Academy clubs as well as sides representing Northern Territory and Tasmania.

“We’ll travel to Sydney twice to play a couple of games down there and then the other three games are in QLD,” Raines said.

“We’ve got a couple of local games which will be good for the boys, in the lead up to that we’ll play 3 practice games.”

The Series is an opportunity for current Academy players to be noticed on a national stage, which can provide a pathway to the AFL draft.

With the SUNS Academy having already produced nine current Gold Coast players, Raines is hoping to add more to that list at the end of the year.

READ: Next wave of SUNS undergo testing

“That’s been the trend over the last couple of years, so hopefully we get some boys into the AFL system which is one of our big goals,” Raines said.

“But it’s not our whole aim of the academy, it’s to help the boys on certain pathways like state-level football if they’re not quite up to it or back to local football.

“It’s a bonus if we do get a few, I’m not going to mention names today because it’s too early in the season, but yeah, there’s a couple I’ve got in mind.”