A group of Fremantle’s first to four-year players will return on Monday to start their pre-season programs.

Several players underwent surgery in the off-season and high performance manager Jason Weber said those players had recovered well and the entire group would ready to start their running programs over the next two weeks.

“We have our first group back as of Monday and then over the next three weeks the rest of the group will come back depending on when they finished their season in respect to the WAFL finals.”

“There will be modifications in different places, there always is with any pre-season program but we’re confident that the players will be in a strong position to progress through the summer.”

Fifth year player, Alex Pearce, who missed last year with a broken leg will also join the group on Monday.

Weber said the key defender is tracking well in his return from him injury and said the 22-year-old had been working hard during the break.

“Alex is up and running, he’s had a strong running program over the off-season period,” Weber said.

“We’ll make an assessment on how he is progressing and build him into football from there.

“There will be modifications, obviously Alex had some challenges but we expect him to get to a standard that will see him play AFL football.”

Ed Langdon, Connor Blakely, Brady Grey, Cam McCarthy, Ethan Hughes, Michael Apeness and Darcy Tucker will join Pearce on Monday.

A blend of running and football skills will evolve throughout the pre-season program, with the focus being on integrating the player group.

“I think the game is continuing to evolve, we have a young player group coming in and a lot of new players,” Weber said.

“Some players may have only been here for 12 months so getting them to integrate as a group and getting each individual optimised as much as possible.

“There will be time trials across the period leading into Christmas but a lot of it is around finding out where the individuals are at, but we can’t stray too far away from football, that’s what we do."

The first to four year players who had WAFL finals commitments start their pre-season training on Monday 13 November, while the five year-plus players are due to resume on Monday 20 November.