Essendon coach James Hird admitted the club still hadn't decided on what kind of player they would target with their first pick in the national draft later this month.
The Bombers enter the November 24 meet at pick 19 and while Hird said a midfielder would be the preference, the club wouldn't stray from its policy to recruit the best available player.
"With the picks we've got I think we have to be a little bit open (-minded) because pick 19's our first pick so you can't pre-empt it too much because you don't know what's going to be there and what's not going to be there," Hird said during Essendon's 2012 membership launch at Etihad Stadium on Tuesday.
"Obviously another midfielder would be a bonus for us and then we'll go from there but best player available is always our policy and if that happens to be a midfielder, we'll go down that path."
And Hird wouldn't rule out the possibility of recruiting a mature-age player before the end of the year.
"If there's a mature-age player who fits the profile, fits what we want during that draft period or the pre-season draft, we'll have a look at them but our preference if they're equal sort of players would always be to go for the younger player that we can mould in our own way," Hird said.
Meanwhile, Hird declared his playing group pretty much had a clean bill of health and that the likes of senior players Stewart Crameri (shoulder), Courtenay Dempsey (knee), Jason Winderlich (knee) and Sam Lonergan (knee) were on track to play in Round 1.
Brent Prismall, who suffered a serious knee injury in July, was the only player set to miss the Bombers' season opener against North Melbourne.
Hird also hoped the worst of Michael Hurley's foot problems were behind him after the young superstar played majority of the second half of the season while battling a 'hot spot'.
The Bombers coach didn't think the problem would be something the club would have to continually monitor.
"We were pretty disciplined with the way we trained him and played him at the back half of the year just to make sure we didn't make it any worse," Hird said.
"Hurls started running today actually for the first time (since the end of the season) which was very exciting, I'm pretty sure he pulled up with no soreness and we'll take it gradually but we're expecting within a month that he'll be integrated into full training."
Captain Jobe Watson said the pre-season training program put together by new high performance coach Dean Robinson, who previously worked at Geelong, would help the young team compete with more physical sides.
"The program we're going to be put through is one that will make us a really strong physical side who's going to be able to stand up when games are tough against teams like Geelong who are really physical," Watson said.
Hird said that despite last season being a step in the right direction, his team still had plenty of areas that needed to be improved including physical development, the ability to play four quarters, defence and ball skills.
And after achieving a record membership figure of 50,271 this year, Essendon is aiming for 60,000 in 2012.