About 15 of the Bombers' first-to-fourth year players commenced pre-season at their Tullamarine base with a high-tempo afternoon session in Melbourne's 32-degree heat.

Joining McGrath on the track were players including new recruit Adam Saad, Anthony McDonald-Tipungwuti, Darcy Parish, Jayden Laverde and Aaron Francis.

McGrath said he had trained for six weeks out of his eight week break in a bid to ensure he would improve on his stellar first season of AFL football. The 2016 No.1 draft pick spent two full weeks doing no training while on holiday in Canada, but said on a second holiday that he did train.

"It's a really competitive list we have now [with recruits Saad, Jake Stringer and Devon Smith]," McGrath said.

"It's going to be really competitive for spots, which is what we want. Everyone needs to find a little advantage to get a spot in the side.

"The way I look at it is you get better and better every year until you get a little bit older so I am fitter and stronger than I was last year and hopefully I can have a lot more impact."

The Canadian-born half-back said he expected to spend more time in the midfield in 2018 after he finished the year alternating between playing as a dashing defender and midfield pinch-hitter.

"I'll do a lot of my craft and skill work with the mids and whether I play there round one, I'm not really sure yet, but we'll see," he said.

The Bombers' drubbing at the hands of Sydney in their 2017 elimination final was their first post-season appearance since 2014. The club hasn't won a final since 2004. McGrath said the team was hell-bent on winning a final in 2018.

"We haven't spoken about it formally but the feel around the group is that we want to go better than we did last year," he said. "We know what it takes now to play finals footy, it was a disappointing loss at the end of last year but we got a taste of it, our young players got a feel of how hard it is ... so I think that will come through in our pre-season and you will see us trying a lot harder and being a lot more desperate."

Essendon's first-to-fourth year players leave for a week-long Northern Territory training camp on Monday.

They will head to Darwin and then the club's academies in West Arnhem Land and the Tiwi Islands. The players will also hike the Katherine Gorge.

"It's a bit of the unknown at the moment [the camp]," McGrath said. "We haven't been given complete details but it will be a nice experience to get away with the younger guys, get back into training, I guess form a mini-leadership group among the younger players and bring that into the season."

The rest of Essendon's list will commence pre-season training in two weeks time.

McGrath, out of contract at the end of 2018, said he was yet to think about putting pen to paper to stay at the Bombers.

However he did say: "I have full trust in [list manager] Adrian [Dodoro] and my manager to get that deal done and I'm sure I'll be here for a long time to come."