CALLING the Whittlesea Eagles’ pre-season interrupted is a bit of an understatement.

With the Black Saturday bushfires and the ground being churned up after being used as a staging area, the Eagles were forced to fly their own coop.

But coach Peter Bugden said the ground had been repaired and the side will be ready to go for their first home game – an Anzac Day blockbuster against Lower Plenty in round two.

“The ground is looking fantastic … It is looking very promising,” he said.

“It’s been an interrupted pre-season because of the disruptions with the ground, so we’ve been all over the shop, obviously it’s not exactly what we would have liked it to be.

“The players stuck at it and have been training down at Mill Park – and on a side ground in a paddock it’s been a bit different.

Bugden conceded that his side had lost “quite a lot of senior players” from the team that finished on top of the Division 2 ladder last year but said they would look to invest in the existing youth at the club.

“We have probably focused on trying to build on our list of younger blokes coming up.

“We had 14 Under 19 players play senior footy last year and we are looking forward to seeing the dividends of that.

“There has been a bit of a cultural change at the club, we have a younger group a lot of the boys who play now played junior footy at the club.”

Among the new recruits are two former Eagles who return to the fold form Northcote Park - Jeremy Page (club best and fairest 2008) and Garrett Heenan.

“They are both 21-22 year olds who have returned to the club. Page will play in the ruck and Garrett will be on ball.”

Bugden in his second year as coach noted the decision to split the league into three divisions midyear and said his side would look to stay in Division Two but there was definitely no pressure to step up to the top division.

“Whittlesea has never won a premiership, so there are no expectations on us.

“We focused in the offseason on just making it an enjoyable season for all the players.

“We have got some good talls, we should have height across all areas of the ground, the taller players don’t get shorter as the game goes on.

“We will have a young team that is hopefully going to learn to play with each other throughout the first half of the year and improve on that.”

The Eagles take on Epping away in round one on Saturday.