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Essendon have produced a brilliant performance to comprehensively defeat a rejuvenated Hawthorn team by 25 points in a Saturday night blockbuster at the MCG.
» Click here to read the full match report
Final score
Essendon Bombers 17.14.116
Hawthorn Hawks 12.19.91
It’s a Saturday night blockbuster as the starting afresh Essendon Bombers take on the revitalised Hawthorn Hawks at the MCG. Join us on The Roar for live scores and a blog from 7:25pm AEDT.
Tonight, it’s Essendon’s first chance to present their refreshed team, and they’re more than ready to get going after a turbulent few years. And, they’ve got the perfect chance to do exactly that: a Saturday night game against Hawthorn at the MCG.
Essendon’s 2016 a pretty painful one – for very understandable reasons, they crashed to a wooden spoon finish.
While looking decent in a handful of games, their player suspensions ended up being too hard to overcome, but for any optimistic Bombers fans, 2016 was (hopefully) a case of short-term pain for long-term pain.
Hawthorn had a very different year, which came to an end in a semi-final against the rampaging Bulldogs.
Alastair Clarkson didn’t hold back during the off-season, shipping off Sam Mitchell and Jordan Lewis, handing Jarryd Roughhead the captaincy, and brining in talent including Jaeger O’Meara and Tom Mitchell.
Both teams are bringing out the big guns for this match. Essendon will have six of their banned stars returning for the first time since 2016: Dyson Heppell, Michael Hurley, Travis Colyer, Cale Hooker, Jobe Watson and Brent Stanton all pull on their footy boots once again.
They’ve also handed debuts to two of their newest players: former Brisbane Lion Josh Green, and 2016’s number one draftee Andrew McGrath.
Hawthorn will be led out onto the prestigious MCG ground by the inspirational Jarryd Roughhead (in his first game as the Hawks captain), while high-profile new Hawks Tom Mitchell, Jaeger O’Meara, Ricky Henderson and Ty Vickery will also all make their club debuts.
O’Meara’s debut, especially, is something that will draw plenty of attention, no doubt.
In a weird sign for Hawks fans, there’s no Sam Mitchell or Jordan Lewis on the team list, and Luke Hodge also won’t be playing due to an off-season indiscretion.
The only game between these two teams last year ended up being a heavy Hawthorn win in Round 12, but it’s honestly hard to look at the past few results.
Tonight’s game is literally the beginning of a new era for the Dons, and the beginning of the Hawthorn revitalisation. Get excited, folks.
Prediction
While most would probably be expecting Hawthorn to end up comfortably winning this one, I’m going go a tad left field and say that Essendon’s passion will ever so slightly get them over the line. No matter the result, though, it’s going to be one hell of a game.
Essendon by 5 points.
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