A great President during an admittedly successful era. Put the issue in this video aside as it’s not relevant, rather enjoy and marvel at a strong, assertive, aggressive and influential Club through its President. Compare this Club stance / brand to what Essendon is today. The opposite of how it was positioned and conducted itself back then.
Great playing list = every single administrator at the club suddenly looks good.
The End.
You don’t think he knows what he is in for….why?
One can be assertive when on the top of their game. When you’re down and fighting for survival talk in a different tone.
He was a nice bloke who loved a beer. He should have sacked Jackson the day he became Chairman though.
We were definitely terrible, Crows also played out of their skins & ultimately ended up being the best H&A side.
The narrative that we had our best side available earlier on in the season is utter BS though.
Menzie & Edwards (debut) ended up coming in for Ridley & Langford that week. Perkins & Tsatas also got injured during the game & Caddy (subbed) went into it clearly not right.
Injury list going into Round 2:
Adelaide also kicked 5 of the last 8 goals though so they hadn’t fully switched off.
Funny thing is, we’ve become accustomed to having a ‘strong side on the field’ even though we still have injuries. Posters have mentioned that when we were 6/4 after 10 rounds last season, we had a strong side. Talk about being Essingtoned! Compare that strong side to a side like Adelaide who hardly had injuries all year and its players very well conditioned, synchronised and match fit.
In round two against Adelaide, when we apparently were at ‘full strength’, we had no Ridley, Langford or Wright. Parish unconditioned and not fit. Hardly ‘full strength’.
Essendon rarely has fielded a near full strength side for a series of weeks running in years. And even when our injury list has been short by Essendon standards, often among those sides there’s 4-5 of those better players working their way back into some form of conditioning after being injuries concurrently. Eg, Parish against the Crows this year.
Essendon’s list is capable of a near finals birth right now if it was confirmed…. I mean really conditioned. Players having full preseasons and playing blocks of games without setbacks. No question.
Unfortunately many of our better players haven’t been match conditioned for years and consequently fans unreasonably mark them down based on an unfortunate reality these players haven been in a position to reclaim form. Darcy Parish / Kyle Langford the best examples. And the team suffered as a result.
Essendon Vs Adelaide - ‘a full side’
On the back of having just replaced a lot of exp (Stringer, Heppell, Kelly, Hind, etc) with draftees over the off-season, we were already missing 5-6 of our best team by round 2 (after being the youngest side to roll out for round 1).
The injuries were well and truly fecked by the latter half of the season but things really weren’t that great to start with.
Too much Christmas cheer for you Mapo !!
One elite player on the list, not one experienced ruckman, forward line not been capable of kicking goals, and overall the Team have poor disposable skills. Sure there are lots of boys who could develop into capable players, but they are young and lack senior games. If you are hanging your hat on McKay, Ridley and Redman to step up on the back line, then can you tell what you are drinking as it must be grand stuff. If you think 2MP and Langford can recover their best form then even that has not proved good enough to win against the top ten teams.
Fair dose of reality right there!!
Disagree Bacchus. One A grader on recent form is true (Merrett). Funnily enough the only one who doesn’t get injured, miss chunks of games or preseasons…. The only one able to showcase near his best football.
However, Parish, Ridley and Langford (add Durham and Caldwell) are realistic chance at A grade level ‘if’, and that was exact my point, if they were fully conditioned, match fit and having full preseasons. That’s one of the key features of why the Adelaide Crows roe ladder sharply. They had continuity.
Your review of the team is based on exposed form of recent past. That wasn’t my point.
My point regarding capability is an Essendon side that has almost no injuries, players enabled to play their best footy having had full and continuous preseasons is a side nearly capable of playing finals. Thats not unrealistic at their best.
Sir Mapo, what are you drinking ? I had a very nice Coonawarra Shiraz last night and on the Barossa Sparkling Burgundy at lunch, but not getting your jollies !
Parish, Ridley, Langford, Durham and Caldwell are nowhere near elite. All are good players and a couple maybe B+, but no A Graders there. Reckon West Coke and the Roos have more elite players than us.
I don’t think you’re understanding my point Bacchus….
Parish and Ridley were near elite before they became chronically injured from 2022 onwards. Both at AA squad level at young ages. Injury has destroyed them.
Langford is a 40-50 goal quality high half forward when not injured for lengthy periods.
Durham and Caldwell are certainly potential A graders.
If you count Merrett as Essendon’s only elite player (and I do), then WCE have the same amount (Liam Baker is a week in, week out gun) and NM have one more (Sheezel and Larkey). But it’s not like there are huge gulfs in list quality between the three teams. Can probably also lump in Richmond and Melbourne. Maybe also FARK CARLTON, because Curnow is a fkg enormous loss for them given the rest of their forward line.
I’m not saying we’re a finals team. We aren’t. I have us bottom 4-6….
We were 6/4 after round 10 last year, with injuries still during that period whilst playing ordinary footy. It’s not unrealistic to believe an Essendon team with nearly no injuries during the season can win 11/12 games… That would place them as ‘nearly’ a finals side.
That’s all I’m saying. IMO, it’s a world that isn’t possible but that’s because we haven’t had years of nearly zero injuries.. Especially to our better players.
Reckon most on here will be upset if the senior core that gets slammed all the time stay injury free and help us climb up the ladder “oh no the dreaded mid table finish and we going to miss out on a top 5 pick sack everybody!”
“Most” people on here would be upset at winning games? And then you mock impersonate these people? FMD.
Yep there was games like beating North,West coast etc people were upset
To say there isn’t is a lie
Just as I was interested, since we moved to a 23 game season, 8th place had the following record (our results in brackets)
2023: 12 wins at 110% (6 wins 70%)
2024: 13 wins at 110% (11 wins 94%)
2025: 15 wins at 121% (11 wins 90%)
