Highlights: New Essendon era begins with a bang

Best day ever!!

It's not irrelevant because the problem here is that people think their return was as big as Roughead. It wasn't even close. Nobody cares whether people think they're innocent of willingly cheating, it's about people thinking that nothing happened and that they were banned for no reason.

Absolutely they screwed up, and were too trusting of advice from club officials etc. but they've served their time, what does it matter whether supporters think they were innocent or whatever. That's irrelevant

The sagas only getting brought up because Essendon supporters and the media are acting like they're some unfairly punished heroes of pure heart, who can do no wrong. The sooner all of you accept that those players did break the rules (according to every legal entity they tried to fight it with), and were punished accordingly, the sooner everyone will shut up about it. The balls in your court.

Nobody expects hounding, there's this thing called a middle ground. The banned bombers didn't suffer, they aren't heroes returning from a war. They didn't get cancer. But equally they aren't criminals. The return shouldn't be mentioned, and if it is, just a simple "they returned from their ban" and move on.

Tippas was deliberate any day, no different from if he had picked it up and kicked it towards the boundary. I don't remember if it was Gibson, but the biggest boo I heard from Essendon over a non deliberate call was when a Hawthorn player snaped out of a contest in defensive 50. If that's the one you're talking about it landed within 10 meters of 4 hawks and bounced awkwardly, cleary not deliberate. If Zach Merrett wasn't been blocking, then the Essendon ruckman would've been impeded too. It wasn't like McEvoy thought the ball was gonna go 10 meters further than the Essendon guy. I don't think it quite evened out, and to be clear I'm not saying Smiths was a goal, just that a touch across the line isn't a review no matter what is ridiculous, but the umpiring in general was just awful. Part of me thinks it would've been better if it was a Hawthorn home game, just because of s reduced number of Essendon supporters pressuring the umpires because they were so desperate for that win.

Better get used to the saga being brought up by supporters of opposing teams after they have been beaten this year, it is a new low in barracking. Mind you, if one of their own players was convicted of drink driving they would be instantly forgiven and would not be labelled as a conv1cted dru nk driver for the rest of their lives.

The Smith touched goal, the umpire is literally right there in the best position and didnt even hesitate so for my mind you have to go with that call. And Hawthorn cant complain too much when McEvoy gets a soft free because the boundary umpire has a terrible short throw and poor Zach Merret, who is only looking at his direct number, "impedes" the ruck contest. There were a lot of dodgy calls going both ways (Tippa's delibrate but Gibson not being penalised, Joe Daniher kicking it out on the full but the field umpire signalling a throw in, missed holding the ball calls, the whole nominated ruck thing) The umpiring all round was a shermozle but at least it felt balanced out and not biased.

India

What do you expect the media to do? Continue hounding them after they've served their sentence? Why? To what end? They may have had a "paid holiday" but I expect they'd rather have been playing

I am getting nauseous at all the gushing over the brave Essendon players... They had a paid 12 months off for drug cheating Nothing brave about their saga Media are soft

I'm still just so confused at how there's been no mention of the screwed up smith touched goal. Like imagine positions at the end of the year are decided by a goals worth of percentage, or maybe even if a goal of that ridiculousness could've got the Hawks up for the win. But yeah, weren't that good yesterday, think they'll get better as the year goes on as the team gets used to having Omeara, Mitchell, Vickery, and Roughie (and Henderson?) in the side. Forward 50 entries were poor, but I think that comes down mostly to going from such a short forward line in 2016 to such a tall one in 2017, so it'll improve. Side note: about halfway through the first Heppell hand balled across the boundary line without any clear target. It seemed to me like a blatant deliberate, but it wasn't called. Did I miss something there, cos I was on the top deck and don't have the best angle.

I think Duryea needed a new set of Jocks after that chase down in the last quarter that led to Heppell's goal. Enjoying the investment in speed as we have generally being a team of plodders for 10 years.

Yep - blatantly clear to me they missed Mitchell, more than they missed Hodge in my opinion. Mitchell has been so brilliant in 'directing ball movement' for the Hawks for the past decade, it's going to take them sometime to adjust. They'll still play finals - their list is still full of class, and still have arguably the best coach in the business. Bombers might get there, but hold your horses. They were nearly at full strength. Probably only missing Myers and one of their rucks (either Bellchambers OR Leunberger). What is very promising for the Bombers is that former walk up starts like Hocking, Howlett, Brown, Bird etc. may struggle to get in the line up now, and they have guys like Francis, Dea, Laverde, J.Merrett, McKenna with senior experience to come in as well.

Hawthorn really missed its on-field leadership in Hodge, Sam Mitchell and Lewis. It was interesting watching Hodge in the coaches box giving a number of suggestions — he will be a very good coach. The lack of on-field leadership (important during Hawthorn’s dominant period) meant that Clarkson had to spend some time during the game at ground level. I thought Anthony McDonald-Tipungwuti's (Walla) performance was very important and he should have been listed among the best players. It is hard to gauge Hawthorn's performance and consequently difficult to evaluate Essendon but they showed speed and an ability to score which has been lacking in the last couple of years.

Not sure if Clarko got it wrong tactically but it did look like the usually smoothly oiled Hawks forward machine was a bit rusty. Perhaps the smalls were adapting to having Roughie back and Vickery. Perhaps Roughie and Vickery are not going to lay enough tackles collectively and one of them needs to be dropped to allow the Hawks to regain their forward pressure. Great to see Essendon fans so happy after years in the wilderness.

Both sides showed many signs of brilliance - and both sides will improve. Sam Mitchell would normally be in the middle of congestion to accurately distribute the ball - but, he was absent from this match and will team with Priddis this year in even more energetic form and be a dynamic combination for the Eagles (Including the value of his intellectual capital that he will pass on). Fantastic start to the season, with the benchmark so high, so early. I'm salivating at the quality of footy to be displayed from most clubs this year.

Arrogant Haws are finished.

Hawthorn aren't going to be a premiership threat in 2017. Has Clarkson got it wrong tactically again in 2017? Essendon must have had a world record number of uncontested marks.