Richmond star Brett Deledio has described the 10th pre-season of his AFL career as “one of the toughest I’ve done”.

The 26-year-old veteran of 195 league games explained the reasons behind the gruelling pre-season on this week’s edition of the Club’s official podcast, “Talking Tigers”.

“With the interchange cap (introduced in season 2014), we’ve focused on that a bit . . . being able to run for longer periods of time,” Deledio said.

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“In our games before the NAB series, we didn’t play full quarters.  We’d play three quarters, with a running session in between.

“That was challenging, especially when it was 45 degrees!

“We didn’t have a camp, so we didn’t get to break it up in that way.

“But we came back a bit later, so they crammed a fair bit more in and really made us work.”

With the new cap on interchange rotations, gun Tiger midfielders such as Deledio, captain Trent Cotchin and Dustin Martin, will spend more time “resting” up forward during matches.

“If we can exploit that a bit, it’s certainly another string to our bow,” Deledio said.

“It means we can stay out on the ground a bit longer as well.

“I love getting down there (forward).  It’s just a matter of making sure that, when it’s coming down, you’re getting hold of it . . .”