DEAN Bailey entered the Junction Oval dressing room yesterday morning to the backdrop of a cricket pitch roller guarding the wicket square. As sport in these parts effectively knows only one never-ending season, we'll never know whether he would have batted or bowled.

The AFL's worst team of 2008 has started training for 2009 — 43 days after its last game, 16 days on from the grand final, 73 days shy of Christmas, and still 38 days before the thwack of leather on willow announces the dawn of the Australian Test summer.

It was all rather surreal, as Melbourne's coach pondered. Greeted by a media pack so big it would make your average state cricketer quiver, Bailey thought out loud: "There's gotta be something else on in the world, surely?"

Perhaps, but nothing to top the sight of a few footballers who haven't even had a chance to work on their tans yet skipping over miniature hurdles and tossing medicine balls.

The Demons have not taken this step lightly, Bailey reporting that an "innovations committee" had looked at a variety of sports to arrive at an optimum off-season break time. They found that footballers begin to lose fitness after two-and-a-half weeks lying idle, some comfort to those who let themselves go for a living.

Several meetings were held with the players' association, Cameron Bruce enlisted as a medium for discussion with the playing group, and concerns with pre-seasons past were encouraged to be aired.

"There will be time off for them during the (Christmas) break," Bailey said of the fortnight's leave his players have up their sleeves, adding that training would be run in cycles to factor in three or four-day spells between now and then. "It's been a pretty well-rounded discussion. Today was the day they came up with, and they're bouncing around."

Harsh Demon fans would argue they've had enough unscheduled days off in 2008 as it is; Bailey again pointed to competitiveness as the major missing ingredient. Not that the early return hints at an old-fashioned path to redemption.

"You can't bring them back early and flog them, that's ridiculous. No one flogs their players now."

For a variety of reasons, they are well advanced on this time last year. Bailey reported that those who undertook a fitness test last week "are in better than average form", sparing the coach the need to act on his threat to go hard at anyone who clocked on unfit for duty.

That they numbered "20-odd" was also heartening; only nine Demons completed the full pre-Christmas program last year, with 16 on modified training by December 20. Twenty-two have hit the ground running this time around, with only six restricted by surgical maintenance.

They will soon also have a proper football ground to train on (at Cranbourne), one with goal posts. "Thirteen other clubs would be looking at this and saying, 'We've had a ground for 20 years to train on'," Bailey laughed.

Yet for season 2008, the posts weren't up at the Junction until round four, and the net behind them a week later because the concrete wouldn't set.

The daily commute from Trinity Grammar to St Kilda for weights cramped the preparation and, said Bailey, left players never feeling like they had enough recovery time to produce a good session the next day. Not that he is labouring on what has been.

"I'm not worried about last year, to be honest. I'm looking forward to this year." Little wonder it's hard to keep track of time.

Melbourne's season was tumultuous on and off the field, but the coach remains proud of the commitment of his staff and buoyed by optimism; like Agent 86 Maxwell Smart in the face of great adversity, he loved it.

Even last week's fitness test excited him. "I know that sounds boring, but I couldn't wait to see what condition they came back in."

Did he sneak in a break himself? "I had 10 days off. That's long enough."

Seemingly the biggest hurdle posed by an early return is repetition, and not just in the gym or on the track. Asked if the Demons had settled on who they would take with first pick in the national draft, Bailey all but rolled his eyes.

"I'm going to get about a month and a half of this question."