“YOU’RE going to see him back to his powerful self and hopefully dominating clearances.”

As he continues his return from a shoulder reconstruction, Patrick Cripps is looking to return to a similar frame that underpinned his dominant 2019 season.

After stripping back last season to enhance his running power, Cripps’ strength will be exactly that in 2021, according to assistant coach Brent Stanton.

Speaking on RSN on Monday morning, Stanton confirmed that Cripps, the coaching staff and the fitness staff had agreed to back in the co-captain’s power game in the upcoming season.

Despite still ranking No.1 in centre clearances across the competition last year, Cripps’ output was down compared to previous years, but Stanton is expecting the skipper to hit the ground running once again.

“We want to get him back to his strength, which is his clearance work,” Stanton said.

“He’s put on a couple of kilos since last year but the most important thing is he’s a very diligent athlete and he wants to get better all the time.

“He still tried to be the prominent person in the midfield with his clearances: I still think he was No.1 in the competition for centre square clearances. We lost a little bit of that around the field as he wanted to try and trim down and improve his running.”

Inevitably, the questions came about Cripps’ fitness and availability, with Carlton’s first fixtured pre-season game against Port Adelaide just over a month away.

Stanton said Cripps was ahead of schedule in his rehabilitation, but the Club would continue to take a cautious approach with the co-captain over the summer.

“He’s really good: he’s ahead of schedule but we’re being quite careful with that,” he said.

“He feels good and he wants to do everything: the medicos and fitness staff are holding him back to a degree. He’s going to be right and ready to go hopefully by our first pre-season game.”