WITH pre-season in full swing for the AFLW program, Carlton is ready to put their best foot forward in 2021.

Co-captain Kerryn Harrington noted that while the isolation period had been difficult, the Blues were ready to move onto the next stage in their training.

“It was almost a strange feeling going back into the Club that night, everyone wasn’t sure how to act or behave given what had happened in the past six months,” Harrington said.

“I think most of the girls are just appreciating being back around people that they really enjoy spending time with and starting to work towards something pretty special.”

After making the finals in the 2020 season that was abruptly cut short, Harrington believes the Club is placed well to make a finals run again, especially given the additional experience now under their belts.

“We’ve been building a pretty consistent program now for the past two years,” she said.

“I think that we’ve now got the experience from a personnel point of view but also game experience in big moments where I think we’re ready to have a good tilt at the flag this year.”

Acknowledging that it is still early days in the pre-season, Harrington noted that the girls would not be getting ahead of themselves and were focusing on what was important now.

“We’re only focused on one team and that’s us,” she said.

“At this time of the year, we don’t really care what anyone else is doing, we’re just concentrating on us and getting ourselves ready.

“The ball is bouncing around pretty well at training at the moment, much better than it has been at this time in previous years, it just shows a real hunger from the group, they’ve put the work in over the last six months on our own just to prepare ourselves and get ready to have a real crack.”

Harrington mentioned the appointment of new Forward Coach, Kade Simpson, attesting that his experience and coaching ability is already making a positive impact on the playing group.

“Everyone is that excited and he’s already brought an enormous amount of coaching and also leadership to the whole team,” she said.

“When you really think about his decision to want to come on board, it just speaks volumes about the Club itself and the way they promote the AFLW program within the Club, the integration of the men's and women's programs has just gone from strength to strength every year and this is just another example of that.”