MELBOURNE’S pre-season camp to Maroochydore in January will be another important stepping stone for building strong relationships among the players and coaches, says manager of football operations Josh Mahoney.

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Although the camp will have a strong emphasis on training – Melbourne will shift its training program to the Sunshine Coast in mid January, while the Asian Cup is being held at AAMI Park – it will be another crucial bonding period for the group, Mahoney said.

“It’s a really important part of getting everyone together,” he told Dee TV.

“We’re going away for 10 days. We’ve seen a big change in all of the clubs on the back of the football cap, which has been introduced this year. Fewer teams are going overseas and more teams are just looking for [local] venues to go away to.

“We’re very lucky to get a really good venue up at Maroochydore and we’ll be able to train up there for 10 days. We’re basically moving our program that we’ll be doing down here up there.

“We’ll be able to do all of the training and everything we want to do up there, but the advantage you get by spending that 10 days together [will be invaluable]. We’ll be doing a lot of extracurricular activities with the players as well.”

Mahoney said a strong focus had been placed on relationships among the players and coaches.

“The more and more they can develop and bond with the players and the coaches, the stronger they will be,” he said.

“They’ve got a longer build up to the season starting this year, so we’ll come back and there will be another two months of training before we really get back into games. There will be plenty of time for our players to develop relationships and build the game plan we want to build.”

Reflecting on the off-season/pre-season period so far, Mahoney said it had been a hectic, but fruitful period for the club.

“It has been a long period. The players do go on holidays, but work is still to be done. The AFL wants to own the calendar and … when you miss out on finals, straight away you’re into talking about player trades and who you could attract to the club and then it moves into the draft,” he said.

“There are a lot of people that continue to work 12 months … but it’s a bit of a relief when all of the players arrive and that happened the Monday just gone, when we got our list of 44 for 2015 all here and ready to go.

“It is a bit of a sigh of relief for everyone that’s been involved, particularly the recruiters. Now it’s [about] handing over to the coaches and doing the best they can to develop them.”

Mahoney said the players had worked hard on the track in the lead-up to the Christmas break, which is almost upon the club.

“It’s great that they’ve been able to get straight into training and they’re doing a power of work. The running numbers all look very impressive this time of the year and every club feels the same,” he said.

“They’ll work until Friday week and they’ll have a couple of weeks off and start back on the 5^th [of January]. They’ll have a week down here and then it’s up to Maroochydore.

“They’ve been working really hard with seven or eight weeks of hard running. They’ll have a couple of weeks off and then it really turns into more football focus in the second half of pre-season really.

“Then people start looking at the calendar and counting down to round one and it’s not far away.”