A thrilling sixth round of the Australian Football League’s 2018 season has come and gone and Essendon’s premiership campaign is off the rails shortly after leaving the station.
Playing in partly cloudy conditions at Etihad Stadium on Sunday, Essendon was brushed aside by a recently lacklustre Melbourne outfit – defeated by 36 points.
The encounter played out in a mirror image of the last clash between the pair with the Bombers setting up a tidy lead in the second term before being crushed by the Demons in the second half. Melbourne won that match by 38 points.
Essendon now faces a tough road ahead, parked in 14th spot with two wins and four losses.
Despite playing plenty of football in Melbourne over the next month Essendon’s chances of evening out its ledger before the bye rounds appear slim to none.
First up is a red-hot Hawthorn, played out the MCG, followed by a clash with a hapless Carlton – a likely tick.
Following the Blues, Essendon faces three matches in a row against top-four fancies – with Geelong at the MCG, Greater Western Sydney at Spotless Stadium before returning to Victoria to face ladder leaders and reigning premiers Richmond at the home of football.
The crushing weight of expectation
Essendon were lauded as likely top eight finishers after finding plenty positives in 2017, with a rare few even tipping them for a premiership.
With the power of hindsight on hand it appears that many vastly overrated the quality of Essendon’s barracks.
Essendon finished last season in seventh spot, scraping into finals ahead of West Coast and Melbourne by slim percentage.
In the excitement of finals football it’s easy to give a side a pass mark simply for making it but the reality is the Bombers’ home and away campaign was far from inspired.
The gap between Essendon and the remaining contenders was showcased in the elimination final against Sydney at the SCG – crushed by 65 points and never looking close after a hard-fought first quarter.
Sydney then progressed to a semi-final clash with Geelong the next weekend and was belted by 59 points at the MCG.
The gap between Essendon and Sydney, and then Sydney and Geelong, perhaps should’ve then been a huge red flag for Bombers diehards.
After finishing fourth in the Coleman Medal race last season full forward Joe Daniher has experienced a nightmare start to the season, kicking just six goals and five behinds thus far.
Daniher’s on-field dramas were encapsulated against Melbourne on Sunday, managing just three behinds on a day his team desperately needed him.
Recruit Jake Stringer has showed the occasional flash in the pan and was a key contributor with three goals against Melbourne but remains far from All Australian contention and will need to produce a long run of strong performances before winning back the respect of the football world.
In the midfield captain Dyson Heppell is a shadow of his former self, with the 2014 in-and-out machine now replaced by an on-baller who is consistently outclassed by rivals.
Down back it’s easy to forget that 32-year-old Brendon Goddard played his best brand of football around 2010 – nearly 10 years ago.
While he’s almost always a thrill to watch, Anthony McDonald Tipungwuti still goes missing for long patches of time and struggles to break said cold streaks.
Zach Merrett, David Zaharakis, Devon Smith and Michael Hurley have all toiled hard in uphill conditions.
All of Essendon’s woes so far were shockingly well summarised in the public’s promotional image of captain Dyson Heppell heading into the season.
Heppell, well tanned and bulging with vascularity and definition with his golden locks soaking up plenty of the frame, bites into and old Sherrin and rips it apart at the seam.
While it was an image that filled plenty of red-and-black foot soldiers with joy for the road ahead, for others it was mocked as a shocking disconnect from reality.
Heppell, an outside midfielder, is hardly well known for his bite at the contest, with other fans complaining that before tearing apart footballs the club should put consecutive finals wins together.
Some even complained that in the ashes of a doping saga the club’s image wasn’t best characterized by a muscular figure literally tearing a football into pieces.
But, heading into the opening round, that’s how Essendon as a club viewed themselves.
(AAP Image/Tracey Nearmy)Dyson Heppell Essendon Bombers AFL 2017
Where do we go from here?
Essendon fans – I’m not saying your season is over.
Far from it. Sydney lost six games in a row at the start of 2017 and made an impact on the finals. With the exception of perhaps Carlton and Brisbane, a finals charge is still on the cards for many a side.
But – spots are filling up fast.
Richmond are the competition’s bench mark and are unlikely to miss out, Lance Franklin’s Sydney and Tex Walker’s Adelaide are likely to both show up and West Coast are slowly but surely looking the goods.
With Greater Western Sydney and Geelong also likely to remain at the top end, Essendon can’t afford to leave its run too late for those final two spots in the eight.
In the last five weeks Essendon has been hammered in the contested football – losing the chase for the hard-ball to Melbourne and Collingwood consecutively, beating Port Adelaide and Western Bulldogs by two apiece, and crushed by Fremantle.
Essendon is ranked 14th for contested possession – the same spot it occupies on the actual ladder in a slice of universal synchronicity.
Likewise the club needs a big boost in tackles, ranked 11th and not far off 15th.
Perhaps scariest of all is the team’s inside 50 count – ranked 17th and barely leading the winless Brisbane Lions in last.
Despite that statistic Essendon are fifth for marks inside 50, hinting at a secret level of potency that’s possible once the ball actually makes it inside the arc.
Right around the ground the Bombers are desperate for grunt, grunt and more grunt, and the big question for the club moving forward will be whether or not the team’s soldiers have what it takes to boost its performance in these metrics.
If not, questions will be asked as to why the club was so confident in entering the season with such a glaring weakness left unexamined.
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