MICHAEL Jamison will play in the VFL next week in a bold bid to push for selection in Carlton's premiership season opener just five days later.

Jamison has been on a restricted training program since a stress reaction in his back was detected in the first week of February.

The 25-year-old will miss the Blues' entire NAB Cup campaign after being ruled out of the final round match against North Melbourne at Visy Park on Sunday, but plans to turn out for the Northern Blues, who open their VFL season against Coburg on Saturday, March 24.

"[My back] is going well, I'm back into full training now, I won't play this week but the plan is to play the week after," Jamison said on Wednesday.

"After running laps of the boundary, you get pretty excited to get back training and also get back playing, so I'm looking forward to that in a couple of weeks."

Carlton opens its premiership campaign against Richmond at the MCG the Thursday after Jamison's planned hit-out in the VFL.

While the important defender still plans to be a part of that team, he realises it won't be the end of the world if he is forced to watch from the stands.

"If I play round one, which is the goal, then that's a bonus, but I'm more looking forward to getting ready for the end of the year," he said.

"Sometimes it's tough to hold back, but you've got to look at the bigger picture - round one is important, but the end of the year is more important."

Jamison addressed the media at Visy Park where he and teammate Matthew Kreuzer presented a guernsey to special guest Daniel Ricciardo, the Australian driver for the Scuderia Toro Rosso Formula One team.

While the Blues will definitely be without Jamison against the Roos this week, they could regain up to 10 senior players who were left out of the team that suffered a 64-point loss to the Brisbane Lions at the weekend.

That defeat continued the club's winless pre-season, but Kreuzer said the failure to register a win in the past four games was not a cause for concern at this time of year.

"You don't really look at that in the big picture," Kreuzer said.

"Obviously we've put some things in place this pre-season that we have to work on and develop.

"We're ticking those things off at the moment, [but] obviously this week it would be nice to have a win before round one."

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