NEW Melbourne coach Paul Roos says he won’t know how his side will fare in 2014, until just before the start of the premiership season.

Roos said he wouldn’t gain a true gauge on his squad until it had completed its pre-season.

“[The players] are going to have the biggest impact as a group,” he said at AAMI Park before the first day of Melbourne’s pre-season on Wednesday.

“If they embrace [the game plan] really quickly, we’re confident we can be a lot more competitive, but it’s a really difficult question to answer.

“Probably up until March, until we start playing practice games, we’ll have a much better idea of the group and where we think we can head in the short term.”

Roos said the early priority in Melbourne’s pre-season was to build relationships.

“Players don’t know coaches and coaches don’t know players, so the first stage for us is relationships – [coaches] getting to know the players and players getting to know the coaches, particularly prior to Christmas,” he said.

“We’ll start to implement some of our game plan [and] Leading Teams [will come into the club] and we’ll have a camp in the first week of December, when all of the players are here. We’ll start to implement that.

“A lot of it will be watching their habits and sitting back, looking at them and then implementing different stages of the game plan prior to Christmas.

Roos said versatile big man Jack Watts, who has predominantly played in attack and down back in the early part of his career, was set to play in the midfield in 2014. 

“You look at benchmark teams and Grand Final teams – you look at [David] Mundy, [Michael] Barlow and [Nathan] Fyfe. They’re really big midfielders,” he said.

“Probably one area we think we’ve done well in, in a couple of young midfielders, is Jimmy Toumpas and young Jack Viney … and they’re going to really good players, I’ve got no doubt, but one of the things that a lot of teams lack and we’re included, are some big midfielders.

“Jack, I really like, when I’ve watched the games over the last two weeks [in the midfield]. [When he’s got the] ball in hand, he’s very, very good. He’s a good decision-maker and he’s really smart.

“We think if he can get in there, with his size and speed and overall strength, and his ability to use the ball, we think that’ll be a positive and we need more midfielders.”

Roos said Watts would benefit from playing in the midfield personally and fit the team’s needs.

“I think [he fits] both. If you’re looking at the team’s needs, we’re looking for midfielders and then all of a sudden we need big midfielders, so we’ve tried to get a couple of them through the trade period.”

“Then we think, we’ve got Jack Watts, and we don’t necessarily need him as a forward … with [Chris] Dawes, [Jesse] Hogan and Mitch Clark. As [tall] defenders, we’ve got Col [Garland], Tom McDonald, Lynden Dunn and ‘Chip’ (James) Frawley.

“So there is a real opportunity to get him (Watts) in that midfield group, to give us some more talent and depth and class. Certainly he ticks off the size. He’s 196cm. Three or four of the Freo boys are seriously big guys.”

Roos was also optimistic about Mitch Clark’s progress from a serious foot injury, which sidelined him for much of his first two years at the club.

“He’s going really well. He’s been running for a while now and his foot’s going really well. He’s really pleased with the way that’s going. When you have a number of injuries, you get weighed down by that, but he’s up and about,” he said.

“He’s extremely important. We know as a forward and even as a ruckman – at Brisbane he was an outstanding ruckman as well – we’ve got some significant upside.

“If we can get some of those players, who have missed some games over the last two or three years – and he’s certainly at the top of that list. If he can have a good 2014, being injury-free, then immediately you become a better football team.”