Numbers were low, which meant it made it mighty tough for the coach to put together training drills.

It's not the case this pre-season.

On the back of a fruitful recruiting campaign, the Pies' training numbers and standards have improved dramatically.

"It's a positive place to be around,'' Moran said.

"The players are coming to training because they want to improve and they want to be part of the footy club.

"We're not ringing around trying to get players to come to training.

"We used to get high teens and sometimes mid-20s in terms of player numbers at training, but this year we've been in the early 30s, which has been fantastic.

"The number of names on our board is looking really healthy. In the past we've battled to have our reserves players attend pre-season training.

"There's still a number of reserves players that are yet to start training, so numbers wise it's really encouraging.

"With the bigger numbers you can actually put some groups together and focus on different things rather than one size fits all because that's what we have to do.

"We've been able to do some targeted, specialist stuff, particularly with the midfielders.

"For me, it's been great."

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The Pies, who haven't won a game since round one of the 2018 BFNL season, are coming from a long way back, but the signs are strong that they'll be more competitive in 2022.

"We had six weeks together as a group, we did two lots of testing over that period and we saw lots of improvement,'' Moran said.

"The buy-in from the group has been terrific. All the recruits have trained strongly."

The recruits have been led superbly by Richmond VFL-listed utility Bailey Henderson.

Back at his home club after playing for BFNL power Strathfieldsaye, Henderson has impressed Moran.

"Bailey has probably only missed a couple of sessions and that was because of his commitments with Richmond VFL,'' he said.

"He's really set the standards at training. At the end of training he'll go run an extra six or eight laps.

"The young players see that, and see what commitment it takes to play at the next level, and it rubs off on them.

"Tommy Horne has been outstanding. He hasn't missed a session... he's a quality player.

"With Bailey, Tommy, Zac Denahy - the training intensity has totally changed. They're competitive and they want to outdo each other.

"Some of our younger players are years off being at that level, but they see how those boys train and they have a crack.

"You can't beat good role-modeling."

Castlemaine's 2022 season starts on April 9 with a home game against Kyneton.

Read more: 2022 BFNL fixture

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