GEELONG ruckman Dawson Simpson is confident he'll be able to rejoin the main training group when the Cats return from their Christmas break.
The 24-year-old will remain on a modified program until then, as he recovers from the serious knee injury he suffered against St Kilda in late July.
"The knee is very strong and it's holding up really well," Simpson told geelongcats.com.au.
"Fitness is as expected. I'm a little bit behind the main group at the minute, but I should be in full training after Christmas.
"I'm really looking forward to getting back in there, but I've been able to pretty much withstand everything that's been thrown at me to this stage.
"So hopefully the body keeps holding up."
Simpson and his teammates are currently sweating it out at an eight-day pre-season camp at Coffs Harbour on the New South Wales north coast.
"We're training hard. We're certainly not here for a holiday. It's a training camp," Simpson said.
The Cats have been doing plenty of footy-specific training on the lush oval at their resort.
They have also been hiking, running and bike riding, with the squad divided up into teams.
Simpson's team, the Royal Blues, took out the strong-man challenge.
"We had all these different things written on a board, and all these reps of different exercises that we had to get though," he said. "We came up trumps in the end."
Looking towards 2014, Simpson, who has played just 11 games since making his AFL debut in 2010, hopes to finally become a regular senior player.
"Short-term goal is to get through the rest of this pre-season without injury," he said.
"That's the main goal for now.
"Then I'd really like to play round one. I haven’t played a round one game, in the AFL or VFL, for three years.
"Just to be able to hit a season after a full pre-season would be great, and then just take it from there.
"To play consistent AFL footy each week would be really good for me, and that's obviously going to be the goal for me this year."
Simpson has been doing a lot of ruckwork against Hamish McIntosh during the training sessions at Coffs Harbour.
Both of them are on track to be available to play in the NAB Cup.
"It's funny because last year we had five ruckmen and then all of sudden we had to scrape together one for round one," Simpson said.
"We had to get Blitz (Mark Blicavs) to move up because we were all injured.
"But it's good that Hamish is up and about and I'm up and about, and we can actually get a bit competitive.
"It will ramp up in January. We'll have some full contact and full contest stuff. It's really good for both of us."
