Brilliant
Our patience for sh*t players is uncanny, almost like we’ve been conditioned to accept this as the norm and that miraculously said player will just come good.
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Bellchambers playing for a free kick.
Also wanted to include “players and coaches smiling while losing” but can’t be responsible for alcohol poisoning.
The days of laughing at clubs like St. Kilda & Melbourne… who have had no success for years are over.
We are one of those clubs. We are going nowhere fast, and we have an administration who are happy being a middle of the road club.
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And it’s sad supporters are happy to accept this as well
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But but but we have injuries.
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but we were the most inexperienced team on the weekend 
Watson details Essendon injury woes and subsequent struggles
By Andrew Slevison
Tim Watson acknowledges that the personnel missing from the Essendon team right now is having a detrimental effect on how they are playing.
The Bombers took a side with the least experience (67.2 average games) across the competition and the third youngest group with an average age of 24 years and eight months into Sunday’s meeting wth St Kilda.
The result for the John Worsfold and Ben Rutten-coached outfit was a 35-point defeat with yet another low score of just 33 which was their fourth score of under 60 in their past six outings.
Players currently sidelined include Jake Stringer, Dyson Heppell, Joe Daniher, Cale Hooker, David Zaharakis, Orazio Fantasia, Patrick Ambrose and Jayden Laverde which has a dramatic impact on the overall quality of the starting 22.
The long injury list has forced Essendon to play with a patchwork forward line consisting of the likes of Jacob Townsend, Shaun McKernan, Kyle Langford, James Stewart, Josh Begley, Will Snelling and Conor McKenna and that in turn has impacted how the midfielders are delivering the ball, according to Watson.
“I think you’ve got to be balanced when you criticise a team,” the former Bombers skipper said on SEN Breakfast .
“They had 12 players out who would be in their team or around about in their team. They did have a lot of injured players.
“They still have a forward line which is dysfunctional. It looked like they needed to play an extra player in their defence which gave St Kilda an extra player in their forward line which made it even more difficult in the forward line.
“It appeared when players were going forward they looked up and there was nothing to kick to so they just held onto the ball and then it became an even greater problem for them. When they did kick it in, a lot of the time it was intercept marked.
“If you had all their players to pick from, including Joe Daniher. If you put Daniher and Stringer into that forward line, straight away it’s a massive difference. Stringer is a game-winning player.
“The mids are ok, they probably need a little more depth in the midfield. They need an inside beast in there.
“Their back line looked brittle yesterday as well, but Cale Hooker is still out of that team.”
Watson dived a little deeper into Essendon’s issues at present, with their game style under Worsfold and Ben Rutten not as distinguishable as they perhaps would like it to be.
“I think what’s happened there with Essendon is there has been an over-correction,” he added.
“We talk about it all the time about how they play on the pace but then they are susceptible to turnovers.
“I think they’ve tried to correct it and they over-correct it, which a lot of clubs do, and they over-compensated for that build-up behind the ball. They slowed the ball movement down which is against the natural instincts of the way they have been playing.
“Their mids got plenty of the ball but they didn’t go anywhere. Their key four midfielders - (Dylan) Shiel, (Andrew) McGrath, (Darcy) Parish and (Zach) Merrett - between them had 49 kicks and 56 handballs. Now they’re not handballs that are going anywhere. Those handballs were often just sharing the pressure amongst that group.
“I thought they had an advantage in that area and they needed to back that midfield to be able to win enough ball to actually give their forward line an opportunity to kick a score.
“Right now, what are they doing? I think they are trying to do a lot of different things but they are not doing them well and they’re not cohesive in any way.”
In conclusion, Watson feels that Essendon’s list with all players at full strength is still only one that will be competitive and not genuinely contend.
“I think they are ok without challenging for the flag but I think people become impatient over a period of time,” he said further.
“John Worsfold has done a lot of really good things in the time that he’s been there but he hasn’t been able to establish a pattern of play that is going to be sustainable.”
The loss on the weekend was Essendon’s third in their last four outings, extending their winless run to four matches. They sit 11th on the ladder on 22 points ahead of Saturday’s clash with Richmond in Darwin.
“Players currently sidelined include Jake Stringer, Dyson Heppell, Joe Daniher, Cale Hooker, David Zaharakis, Orazio Fantasia, Patrick Ambrose and Jayden Laverde which has a dramatic impact on the overall quality of the starting 22.”
Two of those players have either not played or played at their best for years.
One of them has never been up to afl standard.
Which only leaves 3 players out of that bunch that would have made a difference to our side.
Conclusion - same ol excuses *yawn
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Agreed, forget Hooker, Fantasia, Daniher, Zaharakis and McKenna. Hooker is too old and will have no genuine impact for us moving forward. Zaharakis has no genuine impact now. The other three don’t want to be here and won’t be next year. At their best Fanta, Daniher and McKenna are in our best 10 players and along with Stringer And Tippa are our only x Factor players, as sad as it seems without them I can’t see us improving and am expecting a few more years of pain. Our list is young, so we need to get back into the draft, find a new leader to take us forward and hope that in a few years time we can Look at free agents and build a list that can contend. Does this mean that Hurley has to go with the others to try to improve our trading position, we’ll so be it. I am not Sure if there is any other currency amongst our older players but we need a circuit breaker, we can’t keep going the way we are now. Something has to change!!!
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Unfortunately we all know this but no one at the club does
Agree with all that we are cooked. What I cannot understand is how we’ve been a basket case for such a long long time. Board has changed. Coaches come and gone. List turned over. What is it about our club that condemns us to perpetual mediocrity? Where’s the cancer? If we can’t identify that we never get a cure.
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I say Dodoro and player development
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Anyone see that Fox Footy doco on Richmond last year?
‘The Wasted Years’ …was from 1980s to 2010.
We will be the subject of that doco in 20 years time. 2005 to ???
I think it all stems from being in such a rush to relive the glory days and never bottoming out properly when we should have (2005 and 2016 once all the players got suspended but we re-signed them all).
We are the victims of our own culture and haven’t morphed into a successful 21st century football club.
Player development has just been changed with leigh tudor and cam roberts coming in at the end of last year.
Literally almost everything has changed since the saga except for a couple of people.
Simon madden, paul brasher and adrian dodoro are the only people left that have been at the club prior to 2013.
Iv watched that and yes we deserve a documentary.
Essendon deader than the Dodo
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Bottom three performing clubs of the last 20 years are Carlton, Melb and Essendon.
All three have influential, backroom powerbrokers.
I like many others I’d reckon can deal with the fact we have injuries that are holding us back, but the lack of courage by our coaches and selection committee to try the young key players on our list is ■■■■■■■ the fans off.
The club talks up these young blokes as the future/ future stars, yet wont give them ago, they just keep shuffling the magnets and moving blokes out of position.