The official anthem of an Australian Football League team thundered throughout Flagstaff City Hall earlier this week.

The 55 members of the Collingwood Football Club, the Magpies, spent their first day in Flagstaff of their two-week altitude training camp at Northern Arizona University singing the praises of training at high altitude for the last six years.

The Australian-rules football club won their first championship in 20 years, besting another team by a record margin of 56 points, earlier this year.

Team captain Nick Maxwell and others believe that training at 7,000 feet helped them win the Australian version of the Super Bowl. The home of the Collingwood Football club is essentially at sea level.

"To win the premiership was huge for us," Maxwell said. "We have not won one in 20 years, so it was huge for our supporters. It was absolutely over the moon. As players, only one of the players had won one before with another club, so it was extraordinary."

Senior coach Michael Malthouse, who has been at the helm of Collingwood for 11 seasons, said there were tangible benefits to working out at the Skydome, the Wall Aquatic Center and in the NAU weight room.

"This is my fifth opportunity to come here with my team," Malthouse said. "You don't come back to places if they are not good."

The team doesn't just stay on the Mountain Campus to train.

Maxwell said the team would travel down to the bottom of the Grand Canyon and back in roughly six and half hours on Wednesday. The team will also train at the Arizona Snowbowl in the next week.

Coach Malthouse said it was David Buttifant, the team's director of sports science, who persuaded the team to come to the Center for High Altitude Training.

"He had been here before coaching Australian swimmers and found the benefit," Malthouse said.

Those benefits don't just include training at altitude. Maxwell believes intensive training far away from family, friends and other comforts of home help the players bond and focus on their workouts.

"It is good to be with just the players and the coaches for two weeks -- we have a lot more meetings and focus on the game plan," Maxwell said.

The team captain remembers his first trip to Flagstaff -- before the team built a training room in Australia that simulates higher altitudes and his body was acclimated to the higher altitude.

"I got three-quarters up the way the mountain and I can remember my nose starting bleeding," he said. " I got acute altitude sickness, which wasn't that great, but you push through that and come out better afterwards."

The Magpies serenade of the Flagstaff City Council on Tuesday was quickly reciprocated, with Flagstaff Mayor Sara Presler reading a proclamation declaring the two weeks of their training camp "Collingwood Football Club Days."

Joe Ferguson can be reached at 556-2253 or jferguson@azdailysun.com.