COACH Paul Roos says the players have already committed to going the extra mile this pre-season and will undertake training before it officially starts.

Roos said the first to fifth year players will officially return on November 5 and the five-year-plus players will resume on November 17. But Roos said the players were determined to start earlier.

“The players have been really good and they’ve decided to come back a little bit earlier as each of the groups, so there will be some really informal training going on with the players, starting on the 27^th October,” he told Dee TV.

“The older players that want to come back on the 5^th [November] will just do a couple of sessions with the group, so that’s really good. It’s really positive. From my point of view, the players have really embraced it.

“The off-season – the first two or three weeks is about having a mental break and physical break and they have to be pretty fit when they come back at those particular times.”

Roos said the earlier start was a great opportunity to take advantage of a relatively healthy list.

“If we can get a bit of a jump start and everyone’s fit and healthy – the good thing is that this year [fewer players are having post-season operations]. I remember turning up last year and we had about 12 players at the first session,” he said.

“At this stage, talking to our medical guys, [Jack] Trengove and [Jake] Spencer have had operations already, so that’s a positive. Bernie Vince has a shoulder [injury], Dom Tyson a finger [injury] and Maxy Gawn with his knee [injury], so apart from that – we expect everyone to really get stuck into pre-season.

“Hopefully we’ll be a mile ahead, once we start pre-season than what we were last season.”

Roos flagged in his final post-match media conference after the loss to North Melbourne at Etihad Stadium in round 23 that this pre-season would be “bloody hard” and he didn’t back down from that stance.

“It will be hard – there’s no doubt,” he said.

“We’re actually not a bad running team off the field, but we’ve got to be a much better team on the field.

“It’s part of the [role of the] coaches and fitness staff by educating the players and saying ‘you’ve had a taste of the way we think you should play AFL footy and it’s very, very demanding and it’s very, very difficult’.”

Roos said his side needed to work consistently on its defence and offence – rather than just one or the other.

“I don’t think we were able to do [both regularly] in the course of the year. I think early in the year we were a really good defensive team and we were able to do that, but when we tried to open the game late in the season,” he said.

“The last game was a good example – it was our best offensive game for the year and we moved the ball really well, but at the expense of defence. You can’t leak 19 goals a game and expect to win too many games of AFL football.

“We’ve showed we can do both sides, but not in the same game. We did it pretty well against Port twice and the games that we won, so it was probably five or six games where I felt we showed the capacity to do that.

“But over a 22-round season, we weren’t able to do that, so it’s going to be pretty demanding on the players to really reinforce what AFL footy is all about.”

Roos said he will take a break in October after most things are settled off-field.

“I’ll stick around now – I like to look at the finals and [then we’ve got] trading. I’ll sit down with our list management crew and our recruiters – going through some video tapes and get to a few under 18 finals as well, which I’m looking forward to seeing … and I’m doing a bit of research,” he said.

“Then I’ll probably take off mid-trade week, around [October] 10^th, once we’ve got everything sorted out and then I’ll head over to Hawaii for a three-week break, which will be nice and then I’ll be refreshed and ready to go.”

Having completed his first season at Melbourne, Roos said he was much clearer of what needed to be done in 2015. 

“I’m much better prepared going into the second season, not necessarily from a coaching point of view, but just understanding what’s required at Melbourne,” he said.

“When you come into a club and you’re aware of two wins and 50-odd per cent percentage – you’re aware of where they’re at and I’ve got a clear understanding of that.

“Now I’ve got a much better understanding of each individual player and a lot of the problems that we can fix – that we haven’t been able to fix this year. We’ll continue to work on that. [I’m] definitely a lot better placed going into season two than season one.”