MANAGER of football Josh Mahoney says Melbourne’s three-day camp at Sorrento will focus on leadership, relationship building and new coach Paul Roos’ game plan.

The Demons trained at Casey Fields on Monday morning, before heading down to the Mornington Peninsula. Mahoney said the camp couldn’t have come at a better time, given the transformation in the club’s football department. 

“With the number of changes that we made in the off-season, with 11 new players and six new coaches coming to the club, we felt that it was important to have a couple of days away to build relationships,” he told melbournefc.com.au.

“The focus of this camp will be the coaches introducing the game plan and Leading Teams facilitating relationship building activities between the players and the coaches. It’s not a training camp as such; it’s more about education and spending time together.

“The coaches have been working hard on the game plan and we’ll be presenting this to the players during this period. We’ll then work on implementing it through the rest of the pre-season and leading into season 2014.”

Mahoney said Leading Teams “will do a number of different activities” to improve relationships among the squad, and between the players and coaches.

Although training won’t be the major focus, on Wednesday morning, the final day of the camp, the squad will do a bike/swim activity.

Despite several AFL clubs heading overseas or interstate for their pre-season camp, Mahoney said there were a few reasons why the Demons were remaining local this year.  

“Every club has spending priorities and at this stage our priorities are elsewhere,” he said.

“We thought the benefit of spending a couple of days away at a location not far from Melbourne was exactly what we were looking for.  

“With a number of new people and the amount of work that needs to be done prior to the season, we also felt that to be away for an extended period of time was not the best outcome for us.”