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AFL NEWS: Bomber's brutal grilling from club great, calls for crackdown on team selection shenanigans

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22nd April, 2022
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Essendon midfielder Andrew McGrath has been subjected to a gruelling interview with Bombers legend Matthew Lloyd, after the former sharpshooter led a wave of criticism for the club during the week.

McGrath was interviewed by Lloyd on Sportsday in the lead-in to the Bombers’ blockbuster ANZAC Day clash with Collingwood on Monday, with Lloyd not holding back on the 2016 number one draft pick.

“It’s the second shocker in five weeks – I’m talking as bad as it gets,” Lloyd told McGrath of their 48-point loss to Fremantle in Round 5.

“I believe you lack honesty as a group, and that’s a strong thing to say about a team – you lack honesty as a midfield. It’s a hard thing to turn around… what isn’t going to be tolerated that you have in the first five rounds?”

McGrath described the Bombers’ attempts to turn things around during the week as sparking conversations ‘as open as they’ve been in my time at the footy club’, agreeing with Lloyd that he and his fellow midfielders need to ‘stand up and take responsibility’ for the team’s plight.

“We‘re taking it personally – myself, Darcy [Parish], Dylan Shiel are all in there, which are senior leaders of our football club and we need to stand up and lead by example and show the younger players what the Essendon way is,” he said.

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With Essendon’s clash with Collingwood arguably the biggest home-and-away match of the year, McGrath said the club had made a decision that a lack of defensive pressure and work rate will not be tolerated moving forward.

“We’ve spoken a lot about our discipline as a playing group and just not getting things done that are at an AFL standard,” he said.

“We talked a bit about our tackling a bit about our work rate, which comes from the way we set the ground up… things that we’ve been working on for a long period of time that we’re just not getting done out there for one reason or another.

“This week, we’ve kind of put a full stop on any acceptance on any of that and making that an expectation that if you can‘t do that you can’t play.

“We’re really determined to make amends.”

McGrath also denied Lloyd’s suggestion that the Bombers were being ‘over-coached’ and leading to them playing ‘like robots’, praising Ben Rutten for galvanising the group in the wake of their loss to the Dockers.

“Things can often get magnified when things aren’t going well… ’Truck’ has been really great this week,” McGrath said.

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“He was extremely passionate on Wednesday when we had our review. It really came from the heart and hit quite a lot of us between the eyes, which I think we needed.

“[It was] followed by the players talking about their experiences and what was happening, and I guess [it was] led by Truck but then pitched in by our leaders, by our playing group.

“I guess by the end of it, it was a collective agreement on the things that just weren‘t good enough.”

Fresh off a surprise finals berth in 2021, the Bombers sit 15th after Round 5 with a 1-4 record.

However, their chances on ANZAC Day have received a boost, with star duo Jake Stringer and Zach Merrett making shock returns from injury.

Andrew McGrath

Andrew McGrath (Photo by Quinn Rooney/Getty Images)

‘Disrespectful to the fan’: King calls for AFL crackdown on team lists

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Zach Merrett’s surprise comeback from a serious ankle injury for Essendon’s ANZAC Day clash with Collingwood has led David King to urge the AFL to clamp down on team selection shenanigans.

Merrett was initially expected to miss up to eight weeks with the injury, suffered against Brisbane in Round 2. Even the club’s official injury list released on Tuesday claimed he would be sidelined for a further 3-4 weeks.

Jake Stringer’s return has also caused a stir – the Bomber was expected to miss another week with a hamstring injury, but was listed in the extended squad for Monday’s match.

According to King, the Bombers, and other clubs, are disrespecting their fans with the lack of transparency over player injuries.

“I think we should have a greater understanding of where the player is at,” he said on SEN Breakfast.

“The only people they’re hiding this from is the fan.

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“Opposition clubs have a great education of where they’re at because they’re watching training. They’ll say, ‘we think he’s going to play, or we don’t think he’s going to play, or he might have restricted minutes, or he might play a different role’, that’ll be on Stringer and Merrett.”

“Essendon will know, their opponents Collingwood will know, the bookmakers know because they know everything, they get information from inside of clubs and from trackwalkers.

“The only people that get short-changed on all this is the fan.

“The AFL have to do something about the naming of teams. The constant late-change scenario in my opinion is disrespectful to the fan.

“I think the AFL have to crack down on teams just putting these fictitious names… you’re just dudding the fan.”

Zach Merrett of the Bombers handballs

(Photo by Chris Hyde/Getty Images)

Former great Kane Cornes agreed, also putting the blowtorch on the Western Bulldogs after a shock out for their clash with Adelaide.

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Bulldogs fans were shocked when star ruckman Tim English was discovered to have suffered a hamstring injury at training during the week, with the club only revealing the blow when the team was named.

Cornes also took umbrage with the new AFL trend for teams to list missing players only as ‘injured’; in the past, the specific injury had been named.

“I’m looking at the teams that were named yesterday (Thursday), it doesn’t even give you a reason they’re missing.

“Riley Garcia to pluck a name from the Western Bulldogs, he’s out, in brackets, ‘injured’. Tim English, ‘injured’. That used to say: Tim English, ‘hamstring’.

“Rory Sloane … we know he’s had surgery to repair an ACL, it doesn’t even say ‘knee’.

“The disrespect it shows to fans… and we went through a stage where I think it improved.

“We had officials even mid-game speaking to the broadcaster after half-time saying, ‘such and such has been subbed out, he’s got this, we think it’ll be this’ and it was information to the fan. The American sports do it better than anyone.

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“They absolutely take the mickey, AFL clubs, with their fans in terms of injuries.”

Eagles club legend to make heartwarming WAFL debut

Zac Mainwaring, son of the late West Coast great Chris, will make his WAFL senior debut for Claremont this weekend.

The 20-year old, whose father became one of the greatest AFL wingmen for the Eagles during the 1990s before passing away at just 41 in 2007, will dedicate the performance to his dad’s memory.

“This one is really for Dad,” Mainwaring told the West Australian.

“I have been struggling without him of late so this one really means a lot for us all… it is a huge day for the family.”

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A five-goal haul against West Perth in the WAFL reserves last week prompted the call-up for the son of a gun, who made his Claremont debut in 2020.

“I have been working really hard over the last couple of seasons to crack into the league side,” Mainwaring said.

“I was really hoping for a good game. I feel like I have done a lot of work during the pre-season to try and push for a spot in the league side so it was good to play well.

“It’s bloody exciting, I can’t wait.”

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