COLLINGWOOD coach Nathan Buckley says premiership captain Nick Maxwell will more than likely remain at the helm of the team in 2012.
Maxwell, 28, was appointed captain for the 2009 season after the retirement of Scott Burns, who was skipper for one year following Buckley's retirement in 2007.
Buckley, who took his first skills session as senior coach on Monday, said the club would use its usual process to assemble the leadership group but didn't expect anything to change at the top.
"As far as I'm concerned, Nick is the skipper of Collingwood and will remain so," Buckley said at Gosch's Paddock.
Buckley was full of praise for the club's leaders, saying their influence had been "excellent" over the past five years.
"Maxy does it very well, Scott Pendlebury has been fantastic and Darren Jolly and Luke Ball coming into the system has been great for us," he said.
"We'll see where that goes over the course of the next five or six weeks and like every club we'll go through our own process with that."
While Maxwell was absent from the session and Heath Shaw and Cameron Wood didn't take part, Nathan Brown and Jolly looked a picture of fitness and Buckley revealed the dual premiership ruckman had shaved 20 seconds off his 2km time trial from last year.
Buckley said the group, which will travel to Arizona on Tuesday for its annual altitude camp, had addressed October's Grand Final loss to Geelong and were motivated by the disappointment.
"I think it was important to go there and the wounds are still fairly raw in many respects," he said.
"That's what we play the game for and if you're not able to get the job done on the big day … Geelong were the better side on the day, they were the better side three times throughout the year when we played them.
"While we focus on that as well, we can't ignore there are other teams in Hawthorn and Carlton and West Coast that are thereabouts and pushing up, and we'll be focusing on making sure we've got a game plan that's going to knock over the best sides and not just Geelong."
Buckley said although the Pies' physical condition at the end of the season contributed to their 38-point loss, there were elements of their game style that needed tweaking in the lead-up to finals.
He said the game plan would be altered over the pre-season but had no intention of overhauling their style and making the team unrecognisable.
"I think the expectation is it's going to be obvious but I think with the way Collingwood has played its football in recent times has been fairly successful," he said.
"You don't want to throw the baby out with the bath water.
"There will be adjustments and I think towards the end of last year we showed there were adjustments that needed to be made and I think the players are ready for that.
"You can't afford to stand still; standing still is going backwards.
"We've been relatively successful as a football side. Looking at the last two years, we've played in two Grand Finals and won a premiership.
"That doesn't guarantee success going forward. You've got to put the work in, be prepared to stay with the times and make adjustments to be playing your best football at the right time."
Buckley said he felt he was "absolutely" ready to coach and looked forward to getting away with the players and new-look coaching squad on Tuesday.
"It's good. I think anyone who comes into this job first up, you think you can conquer everything in a week. It's not going to happen like that," he said.
"We've put some things in place and we've planned for the pre-season and we'll drip feed some of the changes that we're going to make, and you drip feed the fitness work into the boys as well.
"We're still seeing how the boys have come back from off-season and we're looking forward to getting stuck into it."
