Former teammate reveals Brad Thorn is no chicken

Retired rugby league star Justin Hodges has revealed that you shouldn't get in the way of Queensland Reds head coach Brad Thorn when he's hungry.

Hodges - a former teammate of Thorn's during his rugby league tenure - recounted a brutal preseason military style camp the 2005 Brisbane Broncos went through on Fox Sport's Queenslanders Only.

“I remember back in ‘05 we did this army camp for six days,” Hodges said.

“It was the second night into it and everyone was starving, everyone was hungry and all we wanted to do was eat but they starve you of all that stuff.

“I remember the guy say ‘all right boys if you do the challenge, we’ll bring you some chicken, bread and coleslaw’.

“We thought ‘how good’s this’, so we worked our backside off, sat down and all of a sudden this army bloke walks in and chucked these four live chickens on the ground.

“He said ‘you can either eat them or keep them as pets for the rest of the camp’.

“I remember big Brad Thorn got one of them and just went a couple of twists and his head’s come off."

Fox Sports reported that in his first season at the helm of the Reds, Thorn put his own side through their paces at a military camp.

The 43-year-old threw his 39-man squad onto a bus and off for 48 hours at a Gold Coast army base.