Essendon has taken part in its first training session of 2015 under steaming heat at the True Value Solar Centre.

The entire playing group returned to the track for a light skills session to begin their New Year pre-season campaign.

With under 60 days until the club’s first NAB Challenge match of the pre-season preparations are continuing to ramp up.

Assistant coach Matthew Egan said he was pleased with the way the players had returned form their two-week break.

“It was the first day back so it was just some light kicking and seeing where they are at,” Egan said.

“There is a lot of testing to make sure their bodies are good after the break and that they are ready to go.”

“We give them a pretty good program over the break so that they keep up to date with their running and kicking so by Friday they will be ready to go for a good quality session of skills.”

Captain Jobe Watson has his first session training with new recruits Kyle Langford and Jayden Laverde after being at the club’s high altitude camp in Boulder prior to the Christmas break.

A number of fresh faces returned in good shape with James Gwilt, Jonathan Giles, Adam Cooney and Shaun McKernan having a run alongside their new teammates.

Egan said the focus at training would turn to more game scenario situations as the countdown continued to the start of the season.

“We started to do the match practice before Christmas so we will ramp that up and it will be about getting into more game scenarios,” Egan said.

“We have done a bit of basic stuff and running leading into Christmas and now we will ramp up the skills volume and make sure that is what we have done before Christmas.

“On the bigger days we will see a lot of match practice as we only have seven full weeks until the NAB Challenge.”