Avoiding a repeat of Essendon's horror injury run will be one of the club's aims during the 2008-09 pre-season campaign, coach Matthew Knights has said.

After a well-earned holiday with his family, Knights will spend a week and half away with the club's new high performance manager Stuart Cormack, formerly from West Coast, to devise the club's training regimen for the coming pre-season.

The centrepiece of that program will be making sure his injury-ravaged list will be fit enough to handle the pre-season workload, Knights said.

"The first thing we've got to do is make sure every player who's had an operation or had an injury is completely over their injuries so they can train effectively," Knights said.

"I think we've just got to get good training loads into the players."

"It's about having players available. We can't go through a year we've had this year where you've got 10 or 12 of your best players sitting there on the sidelines in suits."

"It's just not a recipe for good football, particularly having a reasonably young list as it is."

The Bombers have endured a nightmare run with injury this season. Only two players - Paddy Ryder and Brent Stanton - played every game, and a further half dozen played 20 or more.

Furthermore, the Bombers had nine, perhaps 10, of their best 22 out for their final game of the season, which they lost to St Kilda by a whopping 108 points.

Among the injured were Dustin Fletcher, Scott Lucas, Andrew Welsh, David Hille and key youngsters such as Scott Gumbleton, who did not play a game this year, and Alwyn Davey.

However, the coach was reluctant to offer injuries as the excuse for his team's failure on Sunday, though he did concede that resulted in players getting games which they would not have received had the casualty room not been so crowded.

Knights also said the injuries had made his debut season as senior coach like being on the 'Mad Mouse at the Melbourne Show'.

The Bombers lost eight on the trot, starting in Round 4, but with their better players available were good enough to win six out of seven matches between Round 12 and 18.

"There's been a lot of variety, there's certainly been some ups where we've played some good footy and some periods of the season where we've played some very average football and that hasn't been good enough," he said.

"We've certainly seen both spectrums of the year."

The final win-loss record of 8-14 was two or three wins short of what Knights had aimed for but the coach said the club had shown improvement in some areas.

"From a development perspective I think we've unearthed some good younger players that have shown they can play at AFL level," he said.

"We've just got to make sure they get good pre-seasons under their belt so they can continue their improvement next year."