Mitch McGovern had a tough first season at Carlton, with back and hamstring injuries not allowing him to reach full fitness until he was pulled out of the side deep in the year to do a block of training.

Blues Head of Football Brad Lloyd said the key forward returned in much better shape for the 2020 pre-season and won a lot of “respect” from the club.

“I thought the way (McGovern) went away last year and came back super fit, he really gained some respect for initially a tough situation,” Lloyd told SEN’s the Captain’s Run.

With players now off on their own and needing to keep themselves fit, Lloyd believes the senior coach and head of high performance will need to focus on keeping players motivated.

“Some players train more diligently than others and others have different motivations so that’s where (David Teague) and (Andrew Russell) have to push the right buttons,” he said.

“There’s that opportunity with not being in the footy club to have some really good one-on-one conversations with all the playing group and Andrew’s doing that.

“They’ve actually got a really hard program this week, the playing group, so it will be interesting to see how they get through it.

“The challenge is going to be does it go for four weeks, eight weeks, 12 weeks and how we plan for that.

“The challenges don’t change with players across the board and I think we have a pretty diligent playing group that work hard and they’re all super fit at the moment so the key is trying to maintain that.

“If the year does go late into the season and we are going until Christmas, we need them to keep those motivation levels up across the board which is going to be a juggle for all clubs.”

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