MELBOURNE’S new leadership group – including its skipper or co-captains – is likely to be announced around the start of its NAB Challenge campaign, according to coach Paul Roos.

Roos said more time was needed post-Christmas to assess the players in the mix to lead the club in 2014. Melbourne’s first NAB Challenge clash is against Richmond at Etihad Stadium on February 14.

“The important thing is to get the behaviours bedded down and then give the players the chance to live those behaviours, before we start voting on leadership groups and that’s what we’ll try and do,” Roos told Dee TV.

“We’ll try and give the players a chance to get in the leadership group and make a really critical assessment of who are the leaders of the club – not based on who was in the leadership group, who’s a good bloke or who’s been here the longest.

“I suspect we’d like to give them a month to five weeks after Christmas to sit back and watch each other. Maybe, it’d be nice to throw a couple of captains through that intra-club and practice game period, [but we] mightn’t be able to do that.

“I’d say we’d be looking to get leadership groups and captains sorted out probably mid to late Feb, ideally around that timeframe.”

Roos said he was open-minded about the number of players in next year’s leadership group.

“I don’t really have any preconceived ideas. I think the first part of it is to see who the players vote for and who gets the votes. Is there a cut off there? Is it seven, eight or nine [players]?” he said.

“In terms of myself, I’ve worked with six captains in the [Swans’] premiership year of 2005, when Stuie Maxfield stood down and we rotated six captains. We [also] had two captains and three captains [during my time at the Swans].

“For me, it’s just picking the right guys to lead the footy club.”

Roos added that he didn’t have a preference for singular or multiple captains.

“Probably my preference, only because I’ve been involved in more multiple captains – is the multiple captains,” he said.

“I’m not against having one captain, but I do like the idea of spreading the leadership – that’s if you’ve got two or three guys, who are capable of doing it.

“As we move into this phase, I’ll let the players decide who their leadership group is and then we’ll just see who bobs up. Is it one captain or two captains? Who knows?”

Roos said the recent football trip to Sorrento on the Mornington Peninsula wasn’t a traditional pre-season camp, but it still achieved the goals the club had hoped.

“Camps have probably changed a bit from when I went to Mt Buller and we ran 10km and 20km and we were going up and down mountains on mountain bikes and carrying logs and rocks … so it’s very different now,” he said.

“We had a set philosophy of what we wanted to get out of it. We trained at Casey, which was terrific, on the way down. Then really the next two and a half days were with Leading Teams, talking about what we wanted to get out of that.

“We presented the game plan to the players – mids, forwards, backs and development group. We did a little bit of touch down there, a bike ride and swim … so it was really about setting the standards, the culture and the game plan over a three day period. I was really pleased with it.”