COACH Adam Simpson has ruled out star veteran Sam Mitchell becoming West Coast captain in his first season at the club, all but confirming defender Shannon Hurn would remain in the top job.

Simpson said today that the club would begin its leadership discussions in the coming days, before unveiling the 2017 team.

He said four-times Hawthorn premiership player Mitchell, 34, was a strong chance to join the leadership group, with Hurn set to be endorsed for a third season as skipper.

“It's not far away from getting down to working out our leadership group and doing our captain as well,” Simpson said.

“We haven't even started the process yet. But, yeah, I wouldn't be surprised if he (Hurn) held onto it.

“He (Mitchell) won't be captain. But look, there's a strong chance if he gets voted in by the players to be one of our leaders. We know his history and credentials as a Hawthorn player. He's settled into the club and the State really well.”

The Eagles completed a more than two-hour session at Wembley Sports Park today, with ruckman Nic Naitanui and Simon Tunbridge, who are both recovering from knee reconstructions, the only absentees.

There were good signs from ruckman Scott Lycett (knee), who completed some of the session with his teammates before continuing his intensive rehab program on his own.

“Scotty is going well,” Simpson said. “We’ll see him in the early part of the year, maybe not round one, but pretty close to it. He hasn’t missed a beat.

“That’s (Nic Nat) a long term. He’ll have his ups and downs with that but at the moment it’s progressing how we thought it would.”

Rising midfielder Liam Duggan walked and jogged laps today, while Elliot Yeo, Nathan Vardy, Jon Giles and Sam Butler were all pulled out early to run laps while their teammates completed full ground match simulation.

Simpson said they would ramp up intraclub matches from here, with under a month until their opening JLT Community Series game against Greater Western Sydney.

“With the players coming back a bit later every year the gap pre-Christmas is pretty small,” he said. “So training really ramps up now.

“That’s how we’ll progress. We’re probably just about to hit some intraclub action now. The players are ready to go and training is elevated to the point now where we can compete pretty hard so over the next week or so we’ll start to put match practice in.”

Originally published as Mitchell set for Eagles leadership role