The impact of Essendon’s returning players is already noticeable according to Performance Coach Mark Harvey.

The ten returning players, along with the first to fourth year players, officially began their pre-season training this week.

“It’s fantastic to have the players back,” Harvey told Triple M (SA).

“They come back in about three days a week at this particular time and just the confidence it gives our younger players to have them in and around our training sessions is phenomenal.”

Throughout 2016 Essendon regularly fielded line-ups featuring a dozen or more players with less than 50 games experience.

But any growing pains evaporated as those young players adapted to the cut and thrust of AFL football, culminating in the Bombers winning two or their last three games.

“What John (Worsfold) has managed to do is keep the boys focused, we’ve faced enormous challenges,” Harvey said.

“But we managed to hang in there in most of our games and we won three games in the end and if not, we still found ourselves in striking distance.  That’s a really good sign moving forward and something we can build off.”

Despite the strong finish to 2016 and the influx of talent via the returning players and the upcoming National Draft, Harvey said the number of unknowns make it difficult to predict how the side will fare in 2017.

“Obviously they haven’t played a lot together as a group, so differences in communication may be there initially,” he said. 

“Competition and challenges will be created within, but the guys coming back have been very well drilled over their careers and they are the leadership group of our game plan and the way we’ll coordinate our attacks.”