The Bulls held a small session at Harris Park for those looking for a bit of fitness work before Christmas.

Despite stepping down from the coaching role, Nick Skinner took charge of the run.

With new captain-coach Kyle McCarthy on the road back from shoulder surgery, he elected to hand the dual premiership-winning coach the reins.

“I wasn’t going to train as I still haven’t seen the surgeon to get cleared for rehab yet,” McCarthy said.

“But it felt alright so I thought I had better do something.

“The original plan was he (Skinner) ran it and I wasn’t even going to be there.”

There was only a small gathering a players, but McCarthy is far from perturbed by the showing.

Instead he reiterated it was only optional at this time of year.

“We just had a couple of blokes doing extras if they want,” he said.

“It was only optional and not really a compulsory sort of thing.

“I needed it as I was getting a bit fat.”

Instead the 29-year-old expects a big push on the training paddock to come the new year.

It’s been a feature of their past success and McCarthy doesn’t want to stray too far from a winning formula after taking over the coaching responsibilities.

“We won’t do too much this year,” he said.

“We get right into it at training and I think that has kinda of been a success for the last two years.

“We training pretty hard so we will probably ease into

“Everything just eats and drinks over Christmas so you sorta lose what you get before it and most of the blokes do their own thing anyway.

“There won’t be too much emphasis on too much training before Christmas, just to let everyone rest up after the physical season we’ve had.”

The Bulls have had no player turnover from the team who won the grand final during the off-season.

It’s a fantastic place for the premiers to be in, especially after playing the finals series without the star halfback.

McCarthy is happy with the direction the club is travelling in.

“We got through probably 90 per cent of the blokes before the season ended and the last remaining blokes have signed up,” he said.

“That is really good.

“I think we will lose young Tyson Hodge, I think he is going to Canberra, but everyone else has re-signed.”

The Bulls had little turnover after the 2016 grand final win as well.

McCarthy believes it is a real bonus heading into the 2018 season.

“Keeping the same squad and are fair chunk of local juniors is really good,” he said.