The Collingwood Football Club has announced its player leadership group for 2012, with Nick Maxwell to front a unit comprising three new faces from the 2011 version.

Heath Shaw rejoins the seven-man group after being part of it in 2010, while Dale Thomas and Travis Cloke have been voted in by their peers for the first time.

Click here to watch Cloke, Shaw and Thomas discuss their elevation to the leadership group on CTV.

Maxwell will lead Collingwood into battle as captain for a fourth season, while Scott Pendlebury remains the vice-captain, also for a fourth season.

Luke Ball and Harry O’Brien round out the group.

Maxwell, 28, was named Collingwood’s 45th skipper when he replaced Scott Burns at the end of 2008. He earned All Australian honours in 2009 and led the Magpies to the drought-breaking 2010 premiership. He has now played 159 games, including 64 as captain.

24-year-old Pendlebury won his first Copeland Trophy as the club’s best-and-fairest in 2011 and is a premiership player, Norm Smith Medallist and two-time All Australian. He was first named in the leadership group in 2008 as a 20-year-old, and was elevated to vice-captain in 2009.

Shaw comes back into the leadership group as a 26-year-old with 132 games under his belt. Cloke and Thomas are part of the unit for the first time, with both coming off superb 2011 seasons in which they finished third and sixth in the best-and-fairest respectively and were named All Australians.

O’Brien is part of the group for a third-straight season while Ball joined last year.  O’Brien, one of the many success stories of the rookie-list system at Collingwood, has played 135 games since debuting in 2005, while Ball, who is entering his third season as a Magpie after crossing from St Kilda at the end of 2009, has played 190 career matches, including 48 in black and white stripes.

The 2012 Collingwood Leadership Group (L-R): Heath Shaw, Dale Thomas, Harry O'Brien, Nick Maxwell (captain), Nathan Buckley (coach), Scott Pendlebury, Luke Ball and Travis Cloke.