The Demons wrapped up their pre-season trial schedule with a 17.8 (110) to 7.5 (47) win over Temora at Crossroads Oval on Saturday.

After finishing fifth last season before COVID issues forced the finals series to be cancelled, Collingullie-Glenfield Park are tipped to be one of the big improvers after landing a handful of quality recruits.

They have greater midfield depth, headlined by the return of Steven Jolliffe, plus key forwards Andrew Clifford and Sam Stening give them the height and scoring potential they needed.

"I think so (we're more optimistic), the boys we have brought in offer some of the qualities we needed," he said.

"But by the same token last year, we were comfortable where we were at and we were coming off the COVID year (in 2020, when the Demons elected not to play).

"We know we bat a lot deeper than we did last year in terms of midfield stock and general bench players, who will be competing for those spots all year.

"We'll be able to cover those injuries a lot better than we were able to last year."

A host of injuries to key players cruelled the Demons last season, who still showed good signs in the back end by relying on on-ball pressure to grind out some wins.

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Somerville said their focus on the effort areas won't change with some more firepower in their squad.

"In any football team you want to make sure you're hard at the footy and keep that intensity up," he said.

"Obviously if you can capitalise on the pressure and turnovers with good skills, that makes for good footy and takes the pressure off your backline if we're doing that up the ground a bit.

"That won't change, one of our core expectations is to bring that pressure. If we have a couple of blokes who put that scoreboard pressure on more and can take some contested marks, it will make our job a lot easier."

Clifford and Stening didn't play against the Kangaroos, and Somerville said they needed to make adjustment to break through a hard-nosed opposition.

"We just didn't have the forward structure, we didn't have a couple of our guys up there," Somerville said.

"That made it harder and probably made us play a bit differently than we normally would. We didn't respond to playing a different style than we're used to.

"They (Temora) were pretty well drilled, and we opened them up a bit after the adjustments we made.

"It was a bit of a kick around in the second half to get all the bench boys on."

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