CARLTON’S Director of High Performance Andrew Russell has seen some positive early signs at Ikon Park.

Russell has cast an eye over Carlton's players since his first training session in his new role at the beginning of last week. 

While Russell will oversee the high performance development of the team and individual players, he insisted it was them that needed to take responsibility for their fitness.

He said a number of players had impressed him in their return to training.

“They need to take a huge responsibility for [their own fitness]. You have to be prepared for them to fail to succeed,” Russell told On Time on SEN.

“They have to make mistakes. They have to challenge themselves. They have to play around with different ways of doing it until they work out what’s the best way for them.

“Sam Docherty hasn’t had to have been back yet and yet he’s done most of the sessions with the players, coming back from his knee. He’s a genuine professional. You can see he’s going to drive the standards really high and really hard within the group."

Russell was appointed to the role following 14 seasons (including four premierships) at Hawthorn. He was also a part of Essendon’s premiership campaign in 2000 and helped Port Adelaide to a premiership in 2004 as its Head Fitness Coach.

With a highly successful career in football, Russell believes psychology is the most important factor in the life of an AFL player.

Bringing his wealth of football experience to the Blues, he said the mindset of both the group and the individuals within a club were key to its success.

“I think psychology is probably 80 to 90 percent of it all. You’re working on an individual level but you’re working on the psychology of the group the whole time,” he said.

“You’ve got key people - the coach, the footy manager, the doctors and the physios, so there’s the collective mind of the group and the individual minds within the group.

"There’s a lot of different voices within footy clubs these days. It’s hard to know who the players should listen to half the time.

“A lot of the high performance roles are that you’re a middle man between the players, the coaches, the medical people and the physios. You’re trying to pull the whole thing together.”

With pre-season underway and the Blues’ five-plus year players to join the group on Monday, Russell said the side is looking healthy.

Following an injury-interrupted 2018 season, Russell said the return to the training program had been largely successful for the players thus far.

“We’ve got a group of players who are re-conditioning again, coming back from injury at the back-end of the season,” he said.

“We only had four or five players not doing any ball work today – that’s healthy. We’ve got a number of players who are two or three weeks away from getting into full training. They need to re-adapt to full ball work which is not unusual for any group.”