Cats spearhead Tom Hawkins has expressed his delight at the opportunity to add a noted goalkicker in Josh Jenkins to the Cats’ forward mix.

Geelong’s long-time principal forward target believes adding another option up forward will make the Cats more dangerous than they were last year.

"I certainly think adding Josh to our list has strengthened it,” Hawkins says.

"We as players feel like he can help us. He's a pretty flexible player; he can play in the ruck, as a high half-forward and I think where his strength lies is where he plays deep forward, he's really crafty in front of goal. 

"He's really powerful, he's quite nimble for such a big guy, that's probably what surprised me, how big he actually is in terms of tall and broad through the shoulders and thick legs. He'll be a bit of a handful.

Hawkins is hopeful that a strong pre-season will help reverse the former Crow’s football fortunes, with Jenkins kicking under 40 goals for the first time in six seasons last year.

“Hopefully for his sake, he can get a full run at pre-season," Hawkins says.

“Having small conversations with him, he feels like the last couple of years with his ankle he hasn't quite been able to do what he wanted over pre-season, so he gets a full run at it and our footy club gives him a lot of confidence," he said. 

Hawkins is upbeat with the condition players have returned to the club in.

Compared with previous years, the 31-year-old says Geelong’s players were raising the bar once more when it comes to physical testing.

“We had a presentation last week on our results, weight, skinfolds, shuttle testing and some time-trial stuff and it was better than we’ve had before.”

“There are always players that excel at this time of year – Sam Menegola and Blitz (Mark Blicavs) are two that come to mind where this is just their time to shine.

Unfortunately I’m at the other end of the scale… I sort of find myself towards the back end of the running but that’s just footy.