Varcoe, preparing for his 14th season, his fifth with the Magpies, said Moore was among a group of emerging leaders that would aid skipper Scott Pendlebury and vice-captain Steele Sidebottom. "I love hearing from Darcy Moore. He is pretty young in his career but he, absolutely, sees the game unbelievably well," he said. Asked if Moore, preparing for his fifth AFL season, had the potential to be a future leader, Varcoe replied: "Absolutely. Everyone has leadership credentials. They just show it in different ways. Some people don't like to rant and rave. They just do it by actions, which is fine. ''Then there are other people that know what we want to do, the systems that we want to put in place, inside and out and they are actually quite vocal in how they set things up," he said at the Kayo Sports launch of the Australian Grand Prix. "Darcy is a hybrid. He is an unbelievable athlete. It is pretty exciting to see him out there. Fingers crossed for us - to keep him fit throughout the year.

"Jamie Elliott sits in that same category, too, who leads by example but also knows what he is talking about. They are two really good additions that we can possibly have throughout the year. It's exciting times for this club. I have just go to hold on as long as I possibly can." The Magpies' official leadership group, aside from Pendlebury and Sidebottom, also comprises Taylor Adams, Jeremy Howe and Lynden Dunn, with Varcoe adding "there is no one actually better to learn off than our skipper". "It's nice to hear him speak up but we have actually got a lot of leaders now in the club that are building to that standard. It's pretty refreshing to hear different voices come through. It's nice because there are few you probably take a little bit more notice of because they probably don't say as much," he said. "Daniel Wells, he has been around the game a fair bit. He is a good observer of the game. As much as we would like to have him out there (without injury), he contributes a lot in that way." The Pies have worked diligently over summer to improve on a break-out year that culminated in a return to the finals but heartbreak in the dying minutes against West Coast in the grand final. This has included adding Western Bulldogs premiership big man Jordan Roughead and the return of Dayne Beams after a stint in Brisbane.

They also boast a deep and potentially destructive midfield which will have its first prime-time run against Geelong on Friday week in round one. Varcoe, a two-time premiership player with the Cats, said while the Pies had dissected the lessons of their September defeat, it wouldn't be until they were seriously challenged this year that a call could be made on whether they had truly learnt from their mistakes. "I think our group has done that pretty well, in my eyes, anyway (over the pre-season). We won't find out until we get on the park when round one kicks off. Not even then, we are going to face some sort of challenges and adversity throughout the year," he said. "They are the times when you will really find out. You would pretty silly to say: 'We have learnt from it and are going to be great, we are going to be this and that' but when the challenges get thrown down, that's when we will find out.' ''