Courtesy Toronto Star:

Chad Folk has been to 12 football training camps and he knows there’s one all-encompassing truth about every last one of them.

“Nobody likes training camp,” says the Toronto Argonauts centre, who’s finding this one as tedious as all the others. “It’s a grind, no matter what position you play.”

They’re physically demanding. Players are away from their families, housed in student townhouses that bring new meaning to the term “bare necessities.”

Many find themselves in a strange land trying to learn rules they don’t understand.

For the veterans, all they can do here is lose their jobs. For the rookies, all they can do is try to impress somebody enough to land one of the few open positions.

But as hard as it is on the players, it’s nothing compared with the tasks facing those who have to house, feed, treat and equip 76 players for three weeks.

It takes a lot of preparation and a lot of hard work by a surprisingly small number of people to make it happen.

“It’s a challenge,” said Ian Sanderson, the Argos’ assistant general manager, football operations. “We get the usual complaints – the beds are too small and the rooms are too hot – but generally things work out for everybody.”

There’s not much pretty about the Argonauts’ training camp.

The players are housed four to a unit in University of Toronto Mississauga student dorms that look like, well, student dorms, and feel like saunas when the humidity climbs.

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