AFL great Barry Hall reveals his motivation for appearing on this year’s SAS Australia

Barry Hall has spoken out about what prompted him to appear on this year’s season of SAS Australia.

In an interview with 7NEWS on Tuesday, the 45-year-old retired Australian rules footballer said he wanted to ‘challenge’ himself.

Barry explained that he was curious ‘to see if I could still perform at a high level’, and confessed he ‘didn’t have much time’ to prepare for his stint on the gruelling show.

The former Sydney Swans star said he’d been ‘doing some boxing training’ in the lead up to the show, but admitted he was still caught unawares by the tasks.

‘It was not as challenging as I thought it would be physically,’ he admitted.

He added: ‘But mentally, the fact that you could never switch off, would really wear you down over time.’

Barry insisted that the show was ‘real’, and said it provided him with ‘the feeling of successfully completing tasks’.  

‘It’s a feeling of accomplishment I’ve missed since my sporting days. I enjoyed the regiment of it. Knowing our reason, our rules, what was expected,’ he explained.

He said the worst thing about the course was ‘the anticipation of what’s coming next’, and claimed it was ‘all other people talked about and it was annoying’. 

Barry added that he was thrilled to discover he ‘can still perform at a high level at this age, under pressure’, and compared it to ‘riding a bike’. 

‘You must prepare physically, but you need to prepare your mind more so than the body,’ he said.  

The former sportsman is among 17 Aussie celebrities who have signed on for this year’s season of SAS Australia, joining the likes of Anna Heinrich, Locky Gilbert and Simone Holtznagel.