With increasing fitness demands placed on AFL footballers, a strong and uninterrupted pre-season is crucial to on-field success.

Lions.com.au takes a look at some of the players burning up the track this pre-season.

Carlton recruit Tom Bell along with Sam Mayes and Marco Paparone have excelled early.

“Tommy Bell coming from a new club has been great,” midfield coach Simon Black told lions.com.au.

“We’ve had quite a few of the guys that have done most of the pre-season work and done it pretty well.”

Second year player Harris Andrews has added some bulk to his frame over the summer and is on track to better his exceptional 2015.

Midfielder Lewis Taylor and former Roo Ryan Bastinac have impressed during match simulation sessions with the Lions’ first pick in last year’s draft, Josh Schache, not out his depth during contested work.

“Lewy Taylor’s done a great job as has Sam Mayes and (Marco Paparone).

“We’re really looking forward to seeing if they can spring their game to a new level and what they can produce this year. We’re obviously going to be needing them to do that.

“We’ve just introduced the match simulation but in the coming weeks we’ll be stepping it up minutes wise to get their legs conditioned to the workloads and the minutes of a real game leading into the NAB Challenge.”

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