Collingwood will head to Queensland’s Sunshine Coast to kick-start its preparation for 2016.

The players, coaches and support staff will fly out to Maroochydore for the first day of their weeklong pre-season camp, commencing 4 January.

It will be the third camp of the pre-season after earlier sojourns in Falls Creek and Portsea.

“The camp is important, I’m a believer in camps,” High Performance Manager Bill Davoren told Collingwood Media.

“The environment allows you to have the players in the one place for a period of time and, by nature, you can get in the frequency (of work).

“The Queensland camp is a really important part of the next step. It’s the first week of January, which is something different; it’s something we haven’t done before. We’re literally going to finish the Christmas break and get straight on the plane.

“It’s an appropriate week, because we’ve got to rebuild the football program after a two-week intervention, so it gives us a really good opportunity to build that in.”

Davoren explained the camp will be a mix of traditional football work with fitness, strength and conditioning in an environment a long way removed from Olympic Park.

“The humidity brings in another layer of challenge,” he said.

“That, in itself, requires us to be pretty vigilant about how we manage it. We thought this was a really different setting and it’s a good opportunity this year to give it a fresh look.

“I’m keen each year to look at different types of settings and we felt this one was a reasonable challenge.

“We’ll head up there for five days, and it will be a combination of football, conditioning, strength, activities, leadership development and set the platform for a five or six week block leading into pre-season matches. Obviously the match specificities become bigger and bigger but around that we are still pursuing capacity, strength, power, speed, endurance and development.

“We’ve still got a long way to go but I think we’re pretty pleased at the moment. Everyone’s tired, but it’s been good.”

The 4 January check in marks a comparatively early start to the camp. Traditionally, Collingwood’s camps have either been staged prior to the Christmas break or much closer to the commencement of the NAB Challenge.

Just last year, the players were taken to Queenstown in early February, much of which was owed to the longer pre-season brought on by the cricket World Cup.

“This year, when we return, it will be about six and a half weeks until the intra-club, so we’re actually ahead of schedule.

“The challenge with training in the environment that the Queensland teams do is, when you’re not used to it, especially the humidity, there can be a post-camp fatigue so we would rather get that early than later on.

“It is also to keep it a little bit off balance. It’s a different way of doing something, with different timing. It doesn’t compromise footy – it allows us to build footy during the week, whereas if we’d gone up four or five weeks later, there might have been the potential that it might change the way you manage football because of the condition.

“Next year, it might be pre-Christmas. It depends on what the problem and solution is, and what the venue is. It could be a little bit different again.”

Magpies in Maroochydore

All Queensland based Collingwood supporters are invited to attend the team's special pre-season open training session in Maroochydore.  

Be there to watch the team go through its paces, enjoy free face painting and grab an autograph! There will also be food and beverages available for purchase, and car parking is available onsite.

Date: Wednesday 6 January 2016
Time: 9.30-11.30am*
Venue: Maroochydore Multi Sports Complex - 108 Fisherman's Road, Maroochydore

*Please note: Training times are subject to change without notice. Players will be available to sign around the boundary at the conclusion of their training session. Signing times will be dependent on individual training schedules and not all players may be available.