NATHAN Jones has been given the all clear to begin contact work at training following neck surgery in September, declaring he will be "100 per cent" for the start of the season.
On a day when he was confirmed as the Demons' captain for a third successive season, Jones was given permission to start joining his teammates in select drills after a heavy block of conditioning work.
The 27-year-old had an operation on a prolapsed disc, requiring doctors to make an incision at the front of his throat.
"It's been a three-month recovery since then and I've been getting flogged in running the last couple of weeks," Jones said on Friday morning.
"But now I can start joining back into skills – I got the all-clear from the surgeon on Tuesday to slowly integrate back into some contact work and eventually tackling after a month or two.
"I'm three or four weeks ahead of where I thought I'd be and I'll hopefully get in a couple of games in the NAB Challenge and I'll be 100 per cent for round one."
Reigning best and fairest winner Bernie Vince has suffered a minor setback after breaking his little finger at training last week.
Vince was spotted with a splint on his finger at the club's training base at AAMI Park on Friday morning.
"Unfortunately he had an incident last week. He'd actually just made it back into the main group and then busted his little finger," Jones said.
"He's got a little pin in there. It's pretty standard, most boys at this time of year might suffer something minor like that, but that's not going to affect him in terms of weights and running.
"A little bit of (an interruption) with ball work for a few weeks, but he'll be sweet."
Jones also responded to Magpie skipper Scott Pendlebury's assertion that star Demons forward Jesse Hogan could kick 100 goals in 2016.
The Demons captain compared Hogan to Brisbane Lions champion Jonathan Brown last pre-season, but was far more reserved in his judgment on Friday.
"It's a huge call; he's just throwing the pressure on him. I think he wants Clokey (Collingwood forward Travis Cloke) to kick a few more," Jones said.
"For us, Jesse's a super talent and he proved that last year with such a terrific season, but we're all about the team and having 22 contributors on match day.
"Providing he plays his role, but still does what we expect him to do in terms of crashing packs and putting pressure on, he's always going to be a strong contributor for us."
The rest of Melbourne's leadership group will be named after the players have their say, most likely during the club's pre-season camp to Mooloolaba on Queensland's Sunshine Coast in January.
Coach Paul Roos said it was a formality that Jones be installed as skipper, but with such a significant list turnover in the off-season, the club wanted to leave the other leadership positions open.
"It's the reason why we want to give it a bit of time. To have Nathan as captain gives us that immediate stability, but it will be open," Roos said.
"We've got some really good off-field standards, but we want to open it up to game day because clearly that's an area we want to keep improving."
