Essendon’s coaching panel is expected to meet early this week to finalise plans for the club’s 2015 pre-season campaign.

Coach James Hird returned from overseas on the weekend and is expected to meet with his fellow assistant including the newly appointed Mark Harvey early in the week.

Dyson Heppell and Jake Carlisle headline a group of the club’s first to four year players set to return to training on November 5.

General Manager Football Performance Neil Craig said now the senior coaching structure was finalised they would sit down to firm up pre-season plans.

“At the beginning of this week the coaches start to come back from their break,” Craig said.

“James comes back from overseas over the weekend and he is really keen to sit down with Mark Harvey, Nathan Bassett and Matty Egan to plan.”

“They have done some planning but this is about let’s really roll up the sleeves and get the detail into the program.”

“The players start to come back the week after and then all of a sudden it is back on you again so it is amazing how quickly it comes around.”

Hird recently revealed the club would send only a small group to altitude training in Boulder, Colorado with the majority of the group to remain at the True Value Solar Centre prior to Christmas.

"We won't do a big main group of altitude training, we will have. Small group of four or five guys that will go over to Colorado late in December," Hird told essendonfc.com.au earlier this month.

"The main squad will come in two parts - the first to four years in early November and I think ten or twelve days later the older guys come in.

"We will stay here, we have a great new facility, the best facility in Australia so we are going to base ourselves here for three or four months.

"We will train pretty hard, it will be a meat and potatoes type pre-season but one were we work on all things we need to work on to get them in the conditioning they need to be in throughout the year."