Sometimes, when you’re a team with no recent history of success, that long line of failures is all people can see even when the worm starts to turn.
So it has been for Essendon over the past few weeks; after a hot start to 2024 that saw them take an 8-1-2 record into the season’s midpoint, three losses in their last four games was all many needed to dismiss half a year of excellent work. Suddenly, the Bombers were just clinging to their finals spot, and all talk of top four, never mind a premiership, vanished into the ether.
But at the time of writing, courtesy of an invaluable, tremendously good 12-point win over an outmatched and outcoached Collingwood, the Bombers are third, and are certain to remain at least fourth by round’s end.
And the significance of this triumph should be greater than just the size of the scalp – the reigning premiers at the MCG under the bright lights is, after all, as big as they come.
It’s more the way the Bombers played, the calmness with which they defused an early Collingwood surge to slowly but surely wrest back control of the game, so by the time they at last hit the front midway through the third quarter it came as a surprise they were still trailing.
It was the sure, patient use of the football, denying the Pies their chaotic, pressure game with a swathe of uncontested marks, but always with intent to move the Sherrin in one direction or another, never standing still and inviting their foes to come at them.
It was the incredible, ruthless efficiency of Zach Merrett, who has had dozens more prolific games but never any more effective, his brilliant ball skills and sharp mind setting up score after score on a night where the Dons, despite the final margin, had seven more of them than the Magpies.
It was in the absence of the sort of debilitating, goal-conceding turnovers that so often have cruelled Essendon sides of yesteryear; of assessing Collingwood strengths after a classic Magpies burst in the first quarter and instantly snuffing it out, of playing smart, measured football in a way it’s about time we realised is the Bombers’ brand now, win, lose or draw.
It was in Brad Scott’s handpicked midfield combination overwhelming the Pies’ brigade of electric ball-movers, from Sam Durham preventing Nick Daicos from cutting them to ribbons and restricting nearly all his work to in close where he’s infinitely less dangerous – how often will you see him go at 30 per cent by foot? – to Jye Caldwell’s stunning emergence as the inside bull with outside smarts this club have been crying out for since Jobe Watson won* his Brownlow.
It was in a smaller, more streamlined and perfectly balanced forward line that repeatedly led the Pies’ defence on a merry dance in the second and third quarters; in Nate Caddy’s aerial menace, Jake Stringer’s tackle-busting power, Kyle Langford’s leading patterns and Matt Guelfi’s knack of popping up for a crucial goal or two every week.
And most of all, it was in how the Bombers, far more comfortably than the final margin indicated, denied the Pies the sort of final-quarter charge that saw them inflict a heartbreaking loss and a flattening draw in the last two Anzac Day matches. Sure, the Magpies kicked the game’s last three goals, but spaced five and seven minutes apart, there was no flood of scoring, no cataclysmic breakdown in structure, and no irresistible wave of Magpie momentum that has carried them to victory so many times under Craig McRae.
Perversely, if results go against the Bombers this week, then they will remain without a victory over a top-eight team, with the Magpies’ loss giving no fewer than five sides from 9th to 13th the chance to leapfrog them by Sunday.
But don’t think for a second that makes these Dons flat-track bullies. Whether or not their season amounts to anything, this is a team on the fast track to something special, with sensible, measured football at the heart of everything they do.
Previous iterations of Bomber teams have had nights where they look irresistible, where miraculous goals are kicked, dashing half-backs tear up the turf and a litany of dangerous small forwards feast on ample opportunities to pile on massive scores.
Scott’s Dons identify opposition strengths, and try and shut them down. Against Collingwood, they had their sights fixed firmly on two factors: scores from turnovers, and Nick Daicos.
The Pies feast on turnover footy – they won a premiership off renting teams asunder with quick rebounds to fast-spreading forwards. Under McRae, they average 51 points per game from turnovers – a mark that, remarkably, has them only seventh in the league this year, as the copycat industry takes full effect to try and replicate their success.
This has been a weakness for the Bombers this year: averaging 52 points a game against from turnovers, only Richmond and North Melbourne give up more – albeit a ridiculous amount more.
The answer to solving that curly problem was to go on a mark frenzy: the Bombers took 139 of them, their most for the year and eighth-most by any team in 2024 (Brisbane, incidentally, have three of the seven better). And all but 10 of them were uncontested.
19 of the starting 22 – let’s discount Nick Hind given he played about five minutes – had five marks or more, too. This was a team-wide initiative to deny the Pies the ball, and the chance to be overwhelmed by their pressure.
In doing so, Scott put an onus on his team to work and work hard. The Dons covered 296 kilometres around the MCG on Friday night – less than 16 kilometres short of the all time record – while they comfortably outstripped the Pies when it came to sprints, with 274 of them recorded to Collingwood’s 256.
The latter was crucial, because without players working from side to side of the ground and pushing into space, it’s impossible to maintain a kick-mark game and go anywhere. And eventually, when you go from side to side for long enough, mistakes happen, or the team runs out of patience, or Collingwood press up and smother the ball-carrier and prevent any territory gains at all.
Andrew McGrath celebrates. (Photo by Michael Willson/AFL Photos via Getty Images)
The results were spectacular, and so antithetical to previous Essendon teams that tried such a mark-heavy game – Ben Rutten’s 2022 outfit, for one. The Dons went at 76 per cent by foot from quarter time onwards – some distance better than Collingwood (64 per cent) – and whenever they moved the ball laterally, it was done in perpetual motion, with players very rarely keeping hold of the ball for more than a second or two before finding another target.
By three quarter time, the Pies’ pressure rating was its lowest in McRae’s tenure – another huge Essendon, and Scott, tick.
Only two of the Bombers’ goals came from forward half intercepts, too: the rest came from further afield, with six of their 10 goals to three quarter time from chains beginning in their defensive half. A victory of the highest order for the patient but never stagnant uncontested marking strategy that has left so many Dons teams before this one pay the price for foot skills that were once a source of agony for fans.
Shutting down the Pies doing the same was built on pressure: the Dons repeatedly cut off Pies kicks inboard whenever they tried to slingshot, resulting in more errors than McRae can possibly be happy about.
While the Magpies racked up the marks themselves, their ball movement lacked the perpetual motion of Essendon’s, and with significantly less accurate kicking, their end-to-end ball movement suffered.
After a hot start where 44 per cent of the Magpies’ defensive 50 disposal chains ended in an inside 50 in the first quarter, that percentage fell to just 14 across the second and third quarters – less than a third of their first-term mark, and well below the AFL average.
As for Daicos, this was another Durham scalp, despite Daicos’ 31 disposals and game-high 12 clearances. It showed perhaps the most effective way to shut him down, as the Western Bulldogs and North Melbourne (for three quarters) managed: keep him in tight.
Daicos is an incredible ball-user when given time and space, but no footballer is immune to being swarmed by pressure, perceived or otherwise: regularly hacking the ball forward from stoppages with Durham hanging off him, Daicos mustered 23 kicks but gained only 395 metres – some 300 short of his tally against Gold Coast.
Most effectively of all, his disposal efficiency was down at 41 per cent – and worse by foot. Given how much the Pies rely on him and his ball use moving forward, no wonder their turnover numbers skyrocketed, and their ability to keep hold of the football and be damaging with it was severely impeded.
The moment to sum up the night came midway through the last quarter: a Magpies run up the middle, the kind that strikes fear into the hearts of every AFL supporter, saw Brayden Maynard lace out Jack Crisp in the centre square. He gave to Scott Pendlebury, the single last player you’d want with the ball on a fast break with an open 50 to kick to.
The hero of the play ends up being Merrett, crowning his magnificent night with a desperate chasedown tackle to all but nullify Pendlebury’s kick, reducing a damaging attacking play to a scrubby kick that wobbled forward to where Jayden Laverde is well placed to gather the loose ball and begin to repel.
But Jake Kelly is just as crucial here: with Pendlebury coming at him, he holds his ground, and stays on the Magpies star’s left foot. Effectively, that positioning means he can’t straighten up onto his preferred foot, forcing him to carry the ball a step further than he otherwise could before disposing, which gives Merrett the time he needs to chase him down.
It’s smarts mixed with desperation. Good sense and elite talent. A cool head and a fiery passion.
It’s the Bombers of 2024 in a nutshell. And it’s why there’s no telling in this most even of seasons just how far they can rise.
