WELL, this is my first column for the season and I thought I would reflect on the pre-season period and look ahead to the opening round.

We had a positive pre-season. It is long but that's simply because it's a three-month process before you start playing matches. Once February arrives, the program returns to week-to-week sessions.

Bohdan Babijczuk joined the club to head our physical preparation program and has been an excellent acquisition. He is very professional and comes to us with an athletics background, having also looked after Hawthorn for several seasons.

Bohdan has individualised our programs, something the club felt was needed, particularly since we've struggled to run out recent seasons. He has tailored programs for every player.

Our programs before Christmas focused on getting kilometres and endurance into our legs. Post-Christmas we have built up our speed and endurance, cutting down our distances and increasing our repetitions.

During these programs we worked and refined our individual skills but after Christmas the focus was on team/game-oriented plans, 18-on-18 drills and styles of play.

In many respects, pre-season is all about going back to school. It's about putting in the hard yards, going back to the classroom to review video footage of what we did well and to learn where we can improve.

My pre-season started slowly after I had ankle surgery in grand final week to remove bone spurs.

I started feeling the injury in round four or five last year and played through the discomfort for the remainder of 2006. I received painkilling injections during the second half of last season because it got to the stage where the spur was growing out of my ankle and it became difficult to train.

A lot of people don't realise what footballers have to put up with a lot of the time and having these types of injuries makes it very tough to train and play.

The ankle is fine now and I've seen been able to complete the pre-season, though I admit I wasn't at full pace on the first day.

I managed to play every pre-season match except the NAB Challenge clash against Geelong when I was rested. But I now feel confident and am looking forward to round one.

Our NAB Cup campaign lasted just one match. We played Hawthorn and performed well for a half. We certainly struggled with numbers in the midfield, simply because we didn't have our core group playing. We ran out of legs because we didn't have enough rotations but Hawthorn played well that night.

Despite that defeat, I was still quietly confident, knowing that if we had been at full strength we would have been much more competitive. We did over-possess in that match but rectified those issues in the NAB Challenge. This year we are attempting to run-and-carry and use our hands on more occasions.

For our first NAB Challenge match, we played Adelaide in Mount Gambier. We fielded a young team, while the Crows fielded a stronger line-up. We stayed with the Crows in the first half but fell away after the main break.

Against Richmond, we won our first and only match during the pre-season. We fielded an almost full-strength team and played well for four quarters. In our final hit-out against Geelong we lost but again rested several players.

We are yet to field our best team, yet on Friday night we will be close to full strength. Aside from Lynden Dunn (fractured cheekbone) and James Frawley (foot stress fractures), we don't have anyone else more than two to three matches away from being available for senior selection.

It might take us a quarter or two to get going on Friday night because we haven't fielded our best team out on the park yet but once that happens, we are confident the team will be perform strongly.

I'm rapt our club will play on Friday night. Melbourne has been desperate to play Friday night matches for a while and we have shown in recent seasons we have the ability to stand up in big matches.

We certainly hope that's the case on Friday night.