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Opinion
Here’s the thing, right? When your team sucks, you want to be able to find something.
You want to look at what you’re watching and even though it is hurting you more than a mere sporting club that you choose to follow should, you want to be able to see a glimmer. Some sort of speck. You want hope.
This seems to be the issue with Essendon. They manage to give us hope in different forms year after year after year, only to rip it away as swiftly and equally painful as a drunk mate waxing your eyebrow.
It’s been 22 years since we trotted out the greatest team of all time onto the park.
I was in Grade 6 so I was definitely old enough to remember watching the game and enjoying it, but not old enough to truly appreciate it.
It’s now been over 6400 days since Essendon have won a final as that Twitter account is constantly reminding us.
I’ve already jokingly resigned myself to the fact I may not live to see another Essendon flag, a joke that unfortunately is losing its punchline rapidly.
(Photo by Quinn Rooney/Getty Images)
Since that 2000 season we have been an absolute disaster. I went back and had a look at all the win-loss records and jotted down my memories of things that have happened in the 22 years since then.
My memories are as follows:
2001 – 69-point comeback and Gary Moorcroft’s GOAT mark
2003 – Scott Lucas moves to centre half back and kills it
2004 – James Hird’s last-quarter, game-winning goal and hug against West Coast
2007 – Kevin Sheedy and Hird retire
2012 – 8-1 start (!) followed by a 3-10 finish, and missing the finals. Jobe Watson’s Brownlow (and it is still Watson’s)
2016 – Top-up season with the emergence of Anthony McDonald-Tipungwuti.
Eight memories in 22 years.
Since 2002 we have won more than 12 games in a season twice. Thirteen wins and a semi-final loss in 2003 and 14 wins in 2013, which ended in us missing the finals anyway as a supplements penalty.
Not exactly anything to jump up and down about.
Back to the hope now, however. And before anyone mentions anything, I don’t care about your team.
I don’t care about Saints not winning a flag since Napoleon was roaming around Europe. North Melbourne being close to having to relocate doesn’t even register with me. I care about my team sucking.
Back to the hope. Year after year we disappoint, and yet free agents are still attracted to us. Devon Smith, Dylan Shiel, Jake Stringer. Adding these three guys alone to a team should raise the ceiling.
There are a couple of issues with that though. Stringer can’t stay healthy and the other two came from the GWS factory where the flaws of the individual are covered by the sheer magnitude of skill the rest of the team possesses.
(Photo by Cameron Spencer/Getty Images)
Smith drifts in and out of games like a ten-year-old. His defensive efforts are bad when he is drifting around, but that stuff doesn’t get as much attention when you have guys like Lachie Whitfield, Josh Kelly and Jacob Hopper covering for you in the midfield and Phil Davis and Nick Haynes manning the back line.
Was anyone aware that Dylan Shiel can’t actually kick a football to where he intends it to go before he came to Essendon? Again, that might get lost when you have ball users like Whitfield and Kelly to defer to.
We’ve always seemed to have hope. Last year it was Nik Cox who came on strong but is currently going through the sophomore slump to end all sophomore slumps.
Andy McGrath, who I have always liked because you can see he cares, keeps flirting with taking the next step, but seems to slip just before he reaches it.
Darcy Parish is probably the most skilled bloke on our team, unfortunately he can play like too many people have said that to him and the effort goes out the window.
(Photo by Robert Cianflone/Getty Images)
Zach Merrett and Jordan Ridley are guns.
I love Dyson Heppell, but he should be handing the captaincy over to the later of those two sooner rather than later.
Outside of that though? Archie Perkins, Sam Draper and Jye Caldwell have all shown flashes, but is it too much to ask to have more than flashes after 20-plus years of waiting?
Hope is a dangerous thing. It can fill your insides with a false sense of warmth that have you walking tall.
Sometimes hope is enough to see you through the hard times because it is there, and you can see it. As an Essendon fan though, right now, the hope is getting harder and harder to find.
And one last thing. If we throw a ridiculous offer at Jordan De Goey as people have suggested, that could be it for me and Essendon.
Morals and ethics trump football results every time. He should not be the hope Essendon is looking for.
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