Click here to watch CTV's interview with Heath Shaw following training on Friday

After consecutive top-five finishes in the best-and-fairest, Heath Shaw is determined to keep developing and take his game to another level in 2008.

CTV caught up with the soon-to-be 22 year-old at the completion of Collingwood’s first week of pre-season training on Friday, with Shaw discussing his ambitions for next season after being one of the Magpies’ best in 2007.

“I have to take a bit out of my 2007 year, and try to improve on that year,” Shaw said at the Lexus Centre.

“You don’t want to stay at a level pegging, you want to increase and improve each year as you go on, and one more year under the belt always helps.

“Best-and-fairest finishes you don’t really worry about them till the end of the year, but I’d hope to improve on my year last year, a bit more consistency, and hopefully a few more better games under my belt.”

With the Magpies having come so close to toppling eventual premiers Geelong in the 2007 preliminary final, Shaw believes that result will give the players a little bit of extra motivation over the hot summer months.

“You still sort of think about it a little bit, we were pretty close, and five points away from a grand final, you obviously take that on board.

“I suppose going into 2008 we’ll have that in the back of our minds, and I’m assuming the papers will say a bit next time we play Geelong, so it’s obviously going to be in the back of our minds.

“But we can hopefully improve on last year, and if we do improve on last year we’ll be playing in a grand final.

“Our aim from the start of the year is to pretty much make it into the top eight, and then anything on top of that’s a bonus.”

With every club looking for ways to improve, Shaw is confident the huge number of first, second and third year players at Collingwood, many of whom showed an enormous amount playing senior football in 2007, can collectively put more pressure on established senior players.  

“The first year, second year, third year players, they’ve all played an extra season, they might’ve had a few extra games under their belt, and I suppose that’s where our improvement, from the bottom, has got to come from.

“If they improve, even five, 10 per cent, then our team will improve, so you’d hopefully have them putting pressure on the older guys to get a game, which will improve the whole team.”