Essendon coach James Hird is pleased with the way his players have returned from their break during the first week of pre-season training ahead of the club’s 2015 campaign.

The club’s senior players, minus Jobe Watson, Dustin Fletcher and Brendon Goddard who are on international rules duties, returned to training on Monday.

The group has undertaken intensive physical, fitness and conditioning testing over their first three days back at the club.

“There is obviously the 2km test, skinfolds and strength tests which all give us a good indication of their baseline going into the pre-season. It indicates how they have come back and the condition they are in,” Hird said.

“We are extremely happy with the condition of all of our players and we are ready for a big pre-season.

“It gives us an opportunity to get straight into the football, rather then have to get guys fit which happened five or ten years ago.”

Essendon’s development group of first to fourth year players continued their tough start to pre-season with an intense running session on Wednesday in their third week back on the track.

“Friday will be the first time they really come together as a group, with the different start dates you need to be careful about the way they come back to prevent injuries,” Hird said.

“Friday will be our first group session back and it will be a really good skills session.”

Irish recruit Conor McKenna is the only player on the club’s list yet to play a game of senior AFL football.

It is this experience of having done pre-season training previously that has held the team in good stead returning from their off-season break.

Hird said the training period in the lead up to the Christmas break would be in important time in the club’s development ahead of the 2015 season.

“You have to make sure your players have a base fitness that you can get through the season with,” Hird said.

“You want to teach them the game plan, not that it will change too much and make sure their skills are up to certain levels.”

“We have a lot of improvement to do as a team, we obviously made the finals last year but we want to do better than that.”

“The guys are pretty committed to getting all parts of their game better.”