CARLTON is confident the gains it was making in fitness and development won't be severely impacted by football's indefinite break.

The Blues had beefed up their development program over summer, adding Brisbane Lions triple premiership player and former NAB AFL Academy coach Luke Power to their ranks.

His appointment followed the 2018 signing of fitness boss Andrew Russell, who steered Port Adelaide to its 2004 flag and then Hawthorn through its dominant era.

With the fifth youngest list in the competition, and in the first full season under new coach David Teague, the Blues are confident their players will return from the coronavirus-enforced break in strong shape.

"Andrew has been instrumental already since joining the club and he's flat out at the moment getting programs for all players," Head of Football Brad Lloyd told SEN.

"Luke Power is still heavily involved and he's made an outstanding start at the club so we're really just in a holding pattern at the moment with the skeleton staff.

"All of the staff are still engaged but we're on hold for now and doing what we can for the playing group. I'm hoping they're long-term employees of the footy club, and they've been unbelievable culturally.

"At this time you need [good] leaders, which they both are. We've got a young playing list, a lot of early picks and talented players, but also some good characters as well. We've invested heavily to maximise our talent so we'll continue to do that."

Carlton, like all clubs, has been through an extremely challenging period since the COVID-19 crisis struck football, with approximately 80 per cent of its staff stood down last week.

The Blues also made the decision to cut ties with the Northern Blues VFL side, a move that spelled the end of the affiliate's 138-year existence.

Lloyd said the Blues' hope was to have a standalone VFL side next year, but that the structure of state league competitions was uncertain.

"That's the plan, but it is all up in the air," he said.

"The second tier, that's where even planning for soft caps and all that, hopefully over the coming weeks we find out what the AFL's plans are for the second-tier competition. If it was the same as this year we'd look to have a Carlton VFL team in next year.

"The last part of this year, how that VFL program looks we're not sure. Is it eight-to-10 VFL games where we run out as Carlton VFL? That would be the plan, but if there isn't any VFL played we'd probably look to organise practice games against other AFL clubs.

"We've got to be pretty agile at the moment as clubs and work through with the AFL how that looks, we're open to all those possibilities but ideally we would have our Carlton VFL team next year."