Jarrad Waite and Shaun Higgins have come in from other clubs, a variety of previously unavailable players like Robbie Tarrant, Jamie Macmillan, Taylor Garner, Lachlan Hansen and Majak Daw will have recovered from their respective injuries and a crop of new draftees will all be looking for games.
Ben Brown believes the biggest challenge will be squeezing all the club’s talent into the forward line where the stocks are extremely full.
“That is good for us, we need it. I have to take confidence from last year. Every game you play you are fighting for your spot,” Brown told the Herald Sun.
The 22-year-old will begin full training in late January after recovering from knee surgery.
“I had my medial ligament done. I did it five years ago when I did ACL and my surgeon Julian Feller said it should come right but it didn’t turn out that way so we decided to fix it up,’’ he said.
“I injured my knee at the start of the year and needed an arthroscope and it was giving me a few issues at the end of the year so hopefully they will be fixed now.
“It has just gone nine weeks post-surgery and I had the brace on for those whole nine weeks — sleeping in it, walking around.
“Hopefully by the end of January or the start of February I should be back in full training.
“I had an interrupted pre-season last year and barely got to train at all, so I am actually going to have a better pre-season than last year. I will take it as a positive instead of a negative.”
Carrying the issue through his debut season didn’t stop the cult figure from having a profound impact. His presence felt most in the finals campaign where he booted six goals and put in a match winning performance in the elimination final against Essendon.
Despite his efforts, Bown isn’t resting on his laurels and knows he’ll have to prove himself on the training track in order to secure a spot in the Round 1 side which plays Adelaide.
“That competition is going to be red-hot. We have Waite coming into the side and Majak coming back from injury so there are so many big names and good players.”
Knowing the team has what it takes to go one further next year will provide enough incentive, not to mention a 71-point preliminary final defeat against Sydney.
“It was pretty clear to us in the post-season that it wasn’t a good enough effort and we needed to press to be in the Grand Final,’’ he said.
“In some ways it was more than we were expected to do but I think everyone is hungry to do better.
“We feel like having had a taste of it now we need to go one better.”
