With its regular home ground regrowing in preparation for the season proper, the Rams' preseason has been highly improvised with a lot of alternative training. But the club gained welcome access to Westlakes Recreation Reserve in Melton West last week, meaning it has a ground to train on.

A previous offer to Rockbank from Melton Council was access to Kurunjang Recreation Reserve's synthetic surface from 7pm.

However, the club felt the start time did not afford it enough time to conduct meaningful training before sunset.

Recent weeks have seen the Rockbank footballers take to local parks for skills training, while a host of cross-training activities have been commonplace. Rams' co-coach Lee Spry said: "We had to make do with a lot of gym work and road running.

"We split the group, did a lot of cycle work, try to find somewhere we can use the football.

"We've obviously been disappointed but our committee has been flat out."

Rockbank vice-president and assistant coach Joe Basilone and president Geoff Harrison learnt of the Westlakes offer last Wednesday, having done the bulk of requests to the council.

Spry said the quality of Rockbank Recreation Reserve had to be of utmost importance to the club in order to play its home games there.

"Our ground has to be up and going, if we don't play at home we don't get any revenue," Spry said.

Rockbank has appointed former Glenorden player Adam Brookshaw as its co-coach for this season, while the signatures of Laverton duo Michael Kennedy, a ruckman, and James Zerafa are welcome additions.

"We've done a fair bit of recruiting and it's good to pick up a big six-foot-four ruckman," Spry said.

Council leisure services manager Adam Boyle said all sporting clubs in the region had limitations to negotiate in preseason and it had taken action to provide grounds. "It's always difficult to juggle summer and winter tenants, but it has been a lot easier with the introduction of synthetic surfaces."

Rockbank will play a preseason match away at Point Cook on Saturday.