Brad Scott is concerned North Melbourne could be slow out of the blocks this season, as a host of Roos who had off-season surgery race against time to be match conditioned for round one.
Drew Petrie, Ben Brown and Jack Ziebell have trickled back to game-sense training after the Christmas break, but Scott said the club was still walking a tightrope ahead of its season-opener against the Crows at Adelaide Oval on April 5.
"I think that all teams are concerned about a lot of off-season surgery. But our guys have managed it extremely well," Scott said.
"We’re ahead of where I thought we'd be in terms of player availability, but you can get sucked in sometimes by having a player medically cleared to play and their preparation hasn't been good enough.
"We've still got some work to do, but I think the depth of the squad should give us a little bit more comfort.
"But we know we're going to have to be at our best because we've got a pretty tough start to the year."
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After the round-one contest against Adelaide, North Melbourne faces the Brisbane Lions, Port Adelaide, Geelong, Hawthorn, Richmond, Essendon, Fremantle, Collingwood, West Coast and the Sydney Swans in the early part of the year.
North's tall stocks have been hit especially hard since last season, with Petrie (ankle), Brown (knee), Robbie Tarrant (leg), Aaron Black (shoulder), Nathan Grima (foot), Scott Thompson (knee) and Majak Daw (foot) all missing big chunks of pre-season training.
"They're all pretty much out on the track now. Lachie Hansen's (hips) not too far away and he's pretty much the last one," Scott said.
"That being said, they're still behind, there's no doubt about that. We knew we'd walk a fine line and we're still walking a fine line.
"We're hopeful, but we're working really hard at this stage of the year. We need everything to go right from this point on to get pretty close to our full strength side come round one."
Scott said North will use its NAB Challenge campaign, starting on March 1 against the Crows in Port Lincoln, to trial some new players – including recruits Jarrad Waite and Shaun Higgins.
Draftees Sam Durdin and Daniel Nielsen are likely to see game time, although Scott said Ed Vickers-Willis was doubtful after an interrupted pre-season.
Key defender Thompson (knee) will probably be "medically cleared" to play at Port Lincoln but might not be risked, however small forward Lindsay Thomas is desperate to play at his former hometown despite his battles with plantar fascia injury.
"We won't be able to stop Lindsay playing round one," Scott said.
"That's been a great carrot for him because he's had an injury-interrupted pre-season, but he's trained well the last few weeks."
Meanwhile, the Roos will give Sam Wright and Robin Nahas light weeks on the track after both copped heavy hits to the torso at training last Friday.
"They will both be fine. (It was) fairly minor," Scott said.
"They've had reasonable preparations, Sam in particular. So we'll wrap them up in the next week or so and roll them out for NAB (match) one."
