MELBOURNE has suffered a pre-season injury blow with midfielder Ben Newton to be sidelined until February after undergoing ankle surgery.
Newton, who played 11 games for the Demons in 2015 after being picked up as a delisted free agent from Port Adelaide, injured a tendon in his ankle while training in the off-season before the players officially returned for pre-season.
"Ben will be out for a while," Mahoney told AFL.com.au.
"He hurt a tendon in his ankle prior to starting with the group.
"He had an operation on his ankle two weeks ago and he is the one player who won't do much training prior to Christmas."
Newton began 2015 in the senior team but was shunted in and out of the side throughout the season, with a concussion in the middle part of the year hampering his efforts to establish himself in Paul Roos' side.
It is disappointing news for the 23-year-old who was training diligently in the off-season in a bid to improve his endurance base.
Mahoney said the club would closely monitor Newton's rate of recovery before deciding whether to have him up and running by round one.
But given Newton – who is contracted until the end of the season – will be out of training until February, it appears unlikely he will be ready to play by the start of the season in late March.
In better news for the Demons, captain Nathan Jones is ahead of schedule in his recovery from a serious neck injury.
Jones had an operation on a prolapsed disc in his neck at the start of September.
The skipper is yet to join his teammates in full training but trained strongly at Gosch's Paddock on Friday morning as he continues to increase his workload.
"He's ahead of where we thought he'd be at this stage but we've still got a bit of time to get him right," Mahoney said.
"We'd expect him to be ready to go by the start of the AFL season."
Heritier Lumumba is also progressing as expected in his rehabilitation program after having post-season surgery on both of his ankles.
The Demons expect Lumumba to join in full training after the Christmas break.
