Game plan?
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If he is double teamed, which seems to be very frequesnlty, then someone else must be free. We never seem to be trying to look for them.
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Bombers should have done better there, you’d think.
Natural habitat and all.
Our attitude to pre season matches compared to Richmond is night and day. I wonder who has the better philosophy. 
■■■■ this JLT drama; Bombers League of Legends team is top of the standings
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Good enough to hide?
I just hope they show it this year.
dOn’T wOrRy GuYs It’S oNlY jLt
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Is that a Zodiac cipher? 
What he could also mean is they’ve already booked their end of season trips for early september.
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No idiot this year should be satisfied with ‘Best Team Outside The 8’, which I’m surprised the club didn’t adopt for the membership slogan this year… We’ve had the best two draft/trade periods I can remember. No excuses.
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Mate, I’m with you. I wanted to sack everyone last year after not getting into the finals.
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Heppell asks for patience from hungry Essendon fans
By Ronny Lerner
March 12, 2019 — 11.23am
Having not won a final in 15 years and heading into 2019 amid heightened expectation on the back of consecutive big-name off-season recruiting sprees, the Essendon natives are restless.
Another big recruit, this time in the coaching staff, Ben Rutten has also been brought in from the successful Richmond program, in a bid mainly to improve the team’s defensive structures.
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Essendon have not won either of their JLT pre-season games this year.
But after an underwhelming pre-season campaign, which saw them lose both of their practice matches to Carlton and Geelong, put a bit of a dent in the excitement surrounding Essendon, captain Dyson Heppell has called for patience from the Bomber faithful.
The 26-year-old said his team was still getting accustomed to Rutten’s strategy and didn’t expect it to click straight away from the start of the season.
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“It’s all new and new things do take time to really delve in,” Heppell told SEN radio on Tuesday.
“We’ve improved a hell of a lot since it was implemented early days in the pre-season and honestly it’s not too different to what we were doing, just a couple of tweaks, but that will take time to learn and really sink into the group.
“That’s not just going to click and be absolutely on song for round one, that’ll be improving as the year goes but hopefully we can get ourselves in order for round one to be able to compete at our best.”
Heppell also said it was imperative that Essendon brought the same kind of pressure and intensity around the ball on a consistent basis which served them so well in the final two-thirds of the 2018 season.
The Bombers made a terrible start to last year, losing six of their first eight games before finishing with a wet sail, winning 10 of their last 14.
“Just in those first couple of games we really didn’t bring that to the table,” he said.
“We know we can do it and we know how damaging it can be when we bring it so it’s just a matter of everyone buying into it and putting it on the park.”
Heppell was also keen not to shy away from the considerable hype surrounding the Bombers this year, a philosophy which served another huge Victorian club Richmond so well in their 2017 premiership year.
“It’s more so about embracing the expectation from the outside,” he said.
“We’ve got a massive supporter base that are unbelievable and really excited about what we can achieve and we can’t hide behind that and we can’t push that away.”
Key to Essendon’s prospects of success this year is star forward Joe Daniher, who missed most of last season due to osteitis pubis.
And while the 2017 All-Australian big man got through both practice matches unscathed, Heppell was adamant that the club wouldn’t name him for their season opener against GWS on March 24 if they didn’t think he was right to go.
“We’re not just going to rush him straight into round one if he’s not 100 per cent cherry ripe,” he said.
“We’ll make sure he’s ready to go and roll him out when we feel is right … No issue if he doesn’t [play GWS], it’s a long season and he’s got plenty of time to get himself right but I certainly see him lining up in round one.”
They’ve got just under 6 months to fix it.
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I know he’s just toeing the club line, but we have heard all this stuff for the last 15 years. Won’t believe a word until I see us smashing into GWS with everything we have in round 1.
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X was on the radio this morning too hosing things down a bit. Doesn’t feel like our cup is exactly overflowing with confidence right now.
I think we really need a few early wins to get the ball rolling otherwise the pressure will come for us very very quickly.
The lions game in Rd 4 might be a flash point. They look up and about and have the midfield depth and size upfront to trouble us. Also our form line against them is pretty pathetic.
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Investing heavily in panic. If this keeps going we will be bottom 4.
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They’ve been asking for patience for about 10 years. How about ■■■■■■■ delivering for once???
Our patience ran out long long ago, it seems like the club isn’t even confident in itself for this season and are already putting out the message to the fans
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