Brent Harvey, Daniel Wells, Drew Petrie and Michael Firrito are just a few of the big guns that headline the squad released on Wednesday, but Daniel Pratt maintains the attitude is the same regardless of the personnel that takes the field.
"We always go into games trying to win; we never go in half-hearted, so I guess it will be a good contest on Friday night," Pratt said on Wednesday.
"We've had a great pre-season, I think we've only got one or two guys in rehab at the moment, so we've got a full list to pick from.
"We go out to win every week. Obviously we've got some plans for players who are coming back from operations – they'll only play every second week and stuff like that – but when we send a side out onto the park we're going out there to win."
The club looks likely to unveil exciting youngster Jack Ziebell, who unexpectedly fell to the Roos at No.9 in last year's NAB AFL Draft, and Pratt backed the gifted midfielder to have an immediate impact.
"He's built like a man already so he'll play on Friday night," he said.
"If he keeps his form up that he's shown in the last three or four weeks in the practice matches he'll definitely play [in round one of the premiership season].
"He's just one of those natural footballers and he's got athletic ability too. He's going to be a great player for the club if he continues the way he's going. You just watch him at training and he's a natural."
The Roos have won the pre-season competition five times, ranking them third on the all-time winners list behind Hawthorn (nine) and Essendon (six).
In light of the club's financial struggles in recent times, there has been a school of thought that early success was required to help boost membership numbers, but Pratt said the playing group's focus remained on performing and not on the membership drive.
"It's been a little bit disappointing that we're down at this point in time, but we've decided as a playing group that our job is to play football and perform on the field," he said.
"If we can do that then we help out the administration and they're doing their job properly and we're doing our job properly then going forward into the next couple of months then it shouldn't be too hard to get those numbers up."
Dream Team watch – Daniel Pratt is rated a $330,100 defender in Toyota AFL Dream Team 2009.
