THE STEADY influx of fresh-faced young talent at Melbourne in recent years has dramatically altered the make-up of the playing list and has at least one veteran feeling a little like an endangered species.

“It’s a bit scary knowing you’re on the downhill slope of your career,” Cameron Bruce said with a grin as he surveyed the sea of eager new Demons preparing for a pre-season training session at Trinity Grammar in Bulleen on Wednesday.

“But hopefully I do have quite a few years left and can keep improving and just keep pushing myself to keep up with them.”

Hamstring complaints saw Bruce miss six matches last season, but the 162-game veteran maintains he is enjoying his most productive pre-season campaign in years.

“My fitness, touch wood, has been really good,” the 28-year-old said.

“I’ve been doing a fair bit of work on my hamstrings and core stability to try and make sure that I have no lower back pain or hamstring problems.

“It wasn’t an ideal season for me in terms of injury, but hopefully we’re on top of it now. I haven’t felt any soreness at all throughout this pre-season whereas previous pre-seasons I’ve been injured pre-Christmas.

“It’s been going really well and putting this preparation in now will hopefully mean that I can get through a good full season and still be going at round 22 and into the finals. I’m feeling really good.”

Halfway through his ninth pre-season with the Demons, Bruce admits there is a different feel about the club with the departure of a few familiar faces in the off-season and says he feels invigorated by the changes implemented by new coach Dean Bailey.

“When I first started back at training it was almost like a first day back at school. We had so many different faces around, but it’s been really exciting,” he said.

“With new coaches and new ideas, training’s been heaps different and it’s sort of exciting not knowing what drills we’re going to be doing and just trying new things. It’s been really good, last week was probably one of the hardest weeks of pre-season I’ve ever done, so we’re definitely doing the work and showing signs of improvement.

“A lot of the running we’re doing this year has basically been incorporated into the skill-based training drills that we’re doing, whereas last year we had specific running sessions.

“Stuff like playing handball games and doing a lot of running at the same time; it’s more game-style running which is actually a lot harder work and we’re feeling really exhausted after sessions which is good.”

The current off-season has seen a marked decline in the average age of the list with departing veterans such as Byron Pickett, Simon Godfrey, Daniel Ward, Nathan Brown and Clint Bizzell replaced by youngsters Cale Morton, Jack Grimes, Addam Maric, Kyle Cheney and Tom McNamara.

Bruce said that youthful exuberance coupled with more game time from some veterans hobbled by injury in 2007 would allow the Demons to put a more competitive unit on the field next year. 

“Chris Connolly told us the other day that 55 per cent of the list is now under 22,” Bruce said.

“The game’s getting younger and younger and the players are a lot more fresh-faced than they used to be, so us older guys have to train really hard to keep up with them.

“Jared Rivers, Brent Moloney and Clint Bartram have been really smart with their progression throughout training and hopefully they’ll be able to keep ramping it up and be ready to go for round one. They’re really important players for us.

“The amount of injuries we had last year, I mean there is a correlation between the amount of games missed by players and how well your team goes, so we’ve got to be keeping our best players out on the park.”