COLLINGWOOD assistant coach Scott Watters has given a glowing appraisal of the club's pre-season campaign.

The Magpies will break for Christmas on Wednesday, December 23, and Watters maintains the players have made steady progress through the vital first block of conditioning.

"Obviously a big part of our pre-Christmas program is the two weeks that we spend away in Flagstaff [in Arizona] and that was a very successful fortnight for us," Watters said.

"We were really able to drill down on a lot of the technical aspects of our footy and also develop a really strong conditioning base that we'll look to maintain throughout the season.

"That led us into a very strong last week-and-a-half on the track in Melbourne and the players will get a deserved break soon."

The onset of practice matches approximately five weeks into the new year requires a slight switch of focus from purely conditioning goals to game-specific work, however, Watters is confident most of the squad is well-positioned to hit the ground running in early January.

Despite the positive outlook, there have been some notable stand-outs during the long pre-season slog.

"Nathan Brown has certainly been travelling very well and meeting all the goals that we've set him," Watters said.

"Paul Medhurst looks like he's now starting to move into really good physical condition. It's well-documented that he battled a few injuries last year, but he's really starting to come out of that and is starting to string some really good sessions together.

"It's been great to get both Darren Jolly and Luke Ball into the mix. I think those two have had a big impact on training just with the type of characters they are."

Despite being on modified programs, Watters said that the optimism included important big men Travis Cloke and Josh Fraser.

"From Cloke's perspective everything looks positive," he said. "He has been on a monitored program pre-Christmas, but he's certainly moving in a good direction and we're really optimistic about that.

"Fraser is a player who has played a lot of footy so we're just careful of the load that he gets pre-Christmas but they're both tracking where we need them to be at the moment.

"The thing with most football pre-seasons is that what happens in January is crucial so we'll be looking forward to that from both those players."

The serious shoulder injury to Brad Dick has been one of the few sour notes of the Pies' pre-season, but Watters praised the 21-year-old's attitude following the shattering news he will miss up to 10 weeks of the 2010 season.