Roosters coach Marc Greig said the club opted to hold off on handing out a number of contracts post-season, even to some that may of deserved one, choosing to “put the pressure on” for spots at the training track.

North Ballarat struggled to match it with some of the AFL-aligned clubs in 2016 and Greig believes the recruitment of some physically-ready players will help with the club’s on-field performance and depth of list.

Coupled with the signing of five North Ballarat Rebels, the Roosters will continue their pre-season after Christmas with a much clearer picture of what its 2017 line-up might look like.

Former Geelong VFL-listed player Jay Moody, Lake Wendouree full-back Lane Buckwell, East Point star Daniel Tung, Horsham Saints premiership player Jacob Cooke-Harrison and South Colac pair Ben Cox and Tim Spiers top the list of recently acquired mature-age signings. While Jacob Wheelahan, Shannon Beks, Charlie Lee, Nick Hausler and Todd Clode join from the Rebels system.

Greig said it was critical the club supported its developing players with some hardened bodies and was still hopeful of snaring some key recruits to fill the remaining seven positions, but was dedicated to go down the path of growing from within, rather than continually topping up with delisted AFL players.

“We don’t want to have five delisted (AFL) boys come in every year, we want to grow our own,” Greig said.

“We started with a young group this year and we’ll slowly start to get a bit more mature over the next two to three years. We’ll have five or six Rebels boys, but I don’t want to put another 11 kids on – if you’ve got 20 players in two years that are 19-20 you’re not going to compete.

“They’ve (mature-age recruits) had three or four years of senior footy already, so they’re well-equipped physically. We’re in the gym at the moment, but we’ve still got boys and we’re competing against men so we’re still going to struggle at times against the bigger clubs until they get a little older.”

Greig said Louis Herberts and Brenton Payne were training well but were “easing into it”.

Senior Roosters Orren Stephenson, Luke Kiel, James Keeble and Andrew Hooper have been on managed programs pre-Christmas while Tony Lockyer and Nick Rippon have successfully returned to training following post-season thumb surgery.

Jacob Werts and Jono Lanyon will depart after landing jobs in Donald and Bendigo respectively.