Second chances rarely come around in sport. A third is rarer than a comment from AFL House admitting tanking exists. But that is what has been afforded to Essendon after a remarkable nineteenth round of AFL football.
The Bombers should, for all intents and purposes, be firmly out of the running for September action.
In the first 15 rounds this season, Matthew Knights’ side had impressed critics with a hard-running, high-pressured game style that had trumped the likes of Collingwood, Carlton (twice) and Hawthorn.
Even many Essendon fans were surprised at how their side had fared.
If the Bombers could keep it up, they were firmly on track for an unlikely September campaign.
Sadly for hoped-up Dons fans, they couldn’t.
Since beating Sydney in Round 15, the Bombers are now winless in four games.
But miraculously, despite having won eight of 19 games, they are still a genuine chance to make finals.
They are just two points outside the eight. Even losses to Richmond and West Coast and Sunday’s draw with Brisbane have failed to sweep Essendon from the finals picture, as fellow aspirants Port Adelaide and Hawthorn careened into disappointing results of their own.
All three have intriguing runs home. Inconsistent Port play Carlton (home), Brisbane (away) and North Melbourne (home); the just as untippable-Hawks face Adelaide (home), Richmond and the Bombers; Essendon plays St Kilda, Fremantle (away) and the Hawks.
The unpredictable way the results have fallen, it would not be too inconceivable for the Bombers and the Hawks to be playing for that eighth and final spot in finals.
For Essendon, a finals campaign would represent a huge accomplishment, not at least because it would come at the expense of the reigning premier.
But the Bombers have been already been offered more lives than a cat. As promising – at times – as Essendon’s season has been, it is time they took one.
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