Ahead of their round one clash with Hawthorn on Saturday night at the MCG, Buckley said his side's strength was as a contested ball team and they wouldn't be straying from that.

"We believe in contested ball and we think that it's away from our strengths to go away from grunt style or contested ball style," Buckley said.

"We like stoppages, we want to hold the ball in the front half and we want to be aggressive enough to impose our game style on the opposition week in, week out."

Buckley said a thorough analysis of their playing style and personnel was conducted in the off-season to ensure they maximised performance after finishing 13th last season.

"We've made modifications but fundamentally when you have a similar playing list, we have innate qualities and strengths in our list so we spent a fair bit of the off-season looking at that and making sure we're structuring up a game style that actually suits our playing list.

"As such we are looking within rather than at the rest of the competition as far as how we want to play."

While the AFL giants are always under heavy scrutiny Buckley said he was done talking about about their chances of returning to the finals mix.

"We don't need to spruik or beat our chest because we haven't got that much to spruik or beat our chest about.

"A lot of our focus has been internal - you won't hear as much from me or from us.

"We've got to focus on our game style and play a winning brand of footy to be where we want to be and if that means a little less bravado then so be it."

Meanwhile, off-season recruit former basketballer Jack Madgen has been cleared of appendicitis however will sit out their VFL clash with Box Hill on Friday night due to the illness.

Australian Associated Press