CTV > Watch the Mick Malthouse interview

Mick Malthouse believes the South African training camp will give Collingwood a springboard to improve on its 2007 preliminary final result, and help make the players "better people".

With all players and coaches jetting off to South Africa on Saturday, Malthouse spoke to CTV at the Lexus Centre a day earlier to discuss the benefits of the camp for the players both from a football and a life perspective, and also how it may impact on the club's preparation for the season ahead.

The group will spend two-and-a-half weeks training at the world-class high altitude facilities at Potchefstroom's North-West University, before heading to Dubai to take on the Adelaide Crows in the opening match of the pre-season cup competition on February 9.

With the Magpies' having contested two-straight finals series after travelling to Arizona for similar high-altitude training camps in November of both 2005 and 2006, and with the club falling just five points short of a grand final berth last September, Malthouse said the trip will give players a platform with which to attack season 2008 and improve on last year's result.

"Our preparation is forthright in as much as, one, it is to play the game in the pre-season competition, two, to prepare for round one against Fremantle and three, to prepare for the whole season," Malthouse explained.

"So as much as our immediate thing is when we go and play in Dubai, we've got to make sure the reason for the camp is not just to play in Dubai, the reason for the camp is to be ready to play for the whole season.

"Hopefully, by leaving it a bit later, and training in these conditions at altitude, it will prepare us a little bit better than what we were last year, and I thought last year was quite good."

While conditioning the players and giving them the best chance to reach peak fitness is a major objective of the trip, it all comes back to striving for on-field success, according to Malthouse.

"Here at Collingwood… we've had very good pre-Christmas training, the goals have been set.

"The core business is winning games of football, in fact to the extent it's winning premierships. How do you measure success… is it premierships, or is it making the eight, or is it advancing from the bottom up?

"So we've now had two runs at it, in the finals, in 2006 and 2007, and last year was a better year than the year before, so... we don't want to lose ground on last year, and that means that you have to get better."

While a major focus of the camp is preparing the players for battle, Malthouse has always been a big advocate of helping players grow as people, and a trip like this is obviously a wonderful opportunity to experience a very foreign land.

"I think we have an obligation as leaders to make sure the player comes out with far more knowledge than just winning, and that's football-wise, life-wise.

"It (Collingwood) is a wonderful football club that does give you that opportunity.

"We've been to Arizona on two occasions, and now we're going to South Africa, you'd like to think they (the players) come away with a little bit more knowledge of the systems, the cultures, the type of people, the differences, and I think most of them will bless themselves and say, well, we're going pretty well in Australia.

"South Africa's a different place, and I suspect that they'll all come back with a tale or two that should shape their lives a bit better, because I don't think there's any downside to it.

"I'm assuming that if we run it the way we ran the other camps, it will go well for them, and they'll come out of it better people."