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Forget all their 16 premiership victories, Essendon’s stunning 13-point win against Melbourne on Saturday might arguably go down as their most finest victory in their long and illustrious history.
Entering the new season, not many gave the Bombers a chance of winning a match all year after they had twelve players (out of a total of 34) wiped out for the 2016 season as the fallout from the club’s supplements scandal continued.
Among those suspended included captain Jobe Watson, whose 2012 Brownlow Medal still remains in the balance, as well as reigning best-and-fairest Cale Hooker, veteran midfielder Brent Stanton, who without the ban would’ve played his 250th game against the Dees, and recently re-signed midfielder Heath Hocking.
But the Bombers, whose top-up players had a limited pre-season together, sprung arguably the biggest upset in recent memory by defeating the highly-fancied Dees by 13 points at the MCG.
The club promoted the match with a ‘Make a Stand’ campaign, which paid tribute to and defended the 34 past and present Essendon players who’d been banned for the entire season for their role in the supplements program.
Over 10,000 Bombers supporters marched from Federation Square to the MCG pre-match, and in the end the crowd of just over 50,000 would have left impressed at what they saw from the makeshift Essendon side.
They led at every change and though they lost the lead briefly in the final quarter, the Bombers held their nerve to prevail by 13 points and win for just the third time since Round 8 last year.
For the Dees, the loss proves that they cannot handle favouritism status, and it must be frustrating on the club and coach Paul Roos after they had gone through the NAB Challenge undefeated, and had to come from 21 points down at three-quarter-time last week against the GWS Giants to win by two points.
Roos said in his post-match conference that it wasn’t an indication of where the club is at the moment, the Dees having undergone a huge transformation on and off the field under his and CEO Peter Jackson’s watch over the last two-and-a-half years.
But he would’ve been livid at the club underestimating a side that has been rocked to its roots over the last three years with the supplements scandal.
They had also entered their Round 15 match against Essendon last year as favourites, but lost by nine points to a side that was also missing their captain Jobe Watson who’d suffered a season-ending shoulder injury the previous week against St Kilda.
For the record, they haven’t won a match as favourites since Round 4, 2013, when they came from 19 points down at three-quarter-time against GWS to win by 41 points on the back of a record-breaking 12-goal final quarter.
The latest result continued a series of upsets that always seem to occur when the two clubs meet.
Most notably, in 2012, the Demons, who were 0-9 to start that season and were dead last on the ladder, upset the red hot Bombers, who were second on the ladder and whose only defeat to that point came by a point against Collingwood on Anzac Day, by six points.
It was then-Melbourne coach and now-Bombers assistant coach Mark Neeld’s first win as an AFL coach and his only victory against a Victorian club (and a non-expansion club) during his brief 33-match tenure at the oldest club in the AFL.
The previous year, in 2011, the Dees, coached by the late Dean Bailey, used the Friday night stage to make a statement against the Bombers, winning by 33 points a week after they were accused of playing ‘bruise-free football’ against Carlton.
The image of Bailey celebrating the win with his players at full-time was one of the most iconic moments of the season, though he would lose his job eight weeks later after the Dees lost to Geelong by 186 points.
And in 2014, they came from over 30 points down in the third quarter to triumph by a point, with Christian Salem kicking the match winning goal with 20 seconds left.
All that being said, the only expected result came early in 2013 when the Bombers, who were only in the infancy of the supplements scandal, thumped the Dees by a whopping 148 points. It was their first win over the Demons since 2009.
The Bombers’ latest against-the-odds victory proves that it won’t be all doom and gloom for the club nor its supporters, whereby many experts are tipping them to win its first wooden spoon since 1933.
The best of what the club can offer this year was on display in the NAB Challenge when they thrashed last year’s wooden spooners Carlton by 60 points in front of a packed Ikon Park full of pro-Carlton supporters.
If that, and the Bombers’ undefeated record against the Blues since 2012, is anything to go by, then the red and black faithful can look forward to the two teams’ regular season meetings in Rounds 6 and 23 with massive confidence.
The final round clash could in fact decide which club takes the wooden spoon, and thus the number one draft pick in November’s AFL draft, which is to be held in Sydney, this year.
Two wins out of those two would give the Bombers at least three wins, their victory over Melbourne this weekend included. That would be a good goal to set given the low expectations for the club this season.
And from there they will have nothing to lose for the rest of 2016, while their suspended senior players watch on from the sidelines.
Next week, they face Port Adelaide at the Oval, and they’ll have fond memories of their last visit to the City of Churches, which resulted in a two-point win against the odds.
The Power will also be smarting following their humiliating Showdown loss to the Adelaide Crows, which has dipped their percentage below 100per cent after they’d defeated St Kilda by 33 points in the opening round.
They could also look forward to their annual Anzac Day match against Collingwood, which will be the only time the two teams meet this season. The Bombers ended their horrific 2015 season with a three-point win at the MCG in Round 23 last year.
The question now will be whether the Bombers can continue to surprise many with their makeshift side for the rest of the season, or whether reality will hit them hard from here on in.
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