Yeah. I believe literally zero of what coaches and players say in press conferences or in any sort of public forum. It’s only for optics.
Fail.
We need to finish top 4.
Limping into interstate elimination finals - where we inevitably get swatted by some team with a farking bird for a mascot - just isn’t good enough.
Fail.
Fail. I had little interest in going to more than a handful of games because our game style is predictable and beatable.
No flag = failure.
To add to that we have gone backwards, in a pretty big way.
If Essendon players were prisoners in jail and got raped by a big hairy dude they would take learnings from it. Learnings = bad experience. Learnings = permanent psychological damage
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4/10 or E, according to your choice. The only positive is that we made the finals, and even then we did it with a percentage well below 100 and with a very easy draw.
A few players have improved. Redman and Parish in particular, but they’re more than offset by players like Langford and Laverde and Merrett who just haven’t lived up to their promise.
F- for game preparation and mental attitude generally. Someone above mentioned fans turning up for the pre-season game against Carlton, hoping and expecting to see a full-on attack from the first bounce; I was one of them and I don’t think I’ve ever been so disappointed by a first quarter of football. And it set the tone for the whole season. I can’t think of a single game in which we produced four full-intensity quarters — the reason our percentage was so poor is that we won games with a short burst of decent play after trailing for most of the game. And against the tough teams we just folded.
Disappointed. Very.
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I don’t agree with that. I think it’s pretty accurate to say you learn more from your failures than your successes.
There’s just no evidence that we actually are learning anything despite the fact it gets repeated incessantly after every loss. There’s no evidence of any change being made with all the new knowledge we’ve supposedly acquired this year.
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Which would be a feeling akin to watching Hurley attempt one on one defence.
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All the reasons you and @RockyStarPro correctly listed are not compatible with a pass mark.
The score for the club from CEO right on down could be no better than F-
D+
We had a few positives: Redman has improved rating to B+, McKenna with his more accurate disposal and reliable decision-making has gone to a B+, Dylan Clarke has developed his tagging role and goes to a B, Paddy Ambrose has regained consistency and is back to a B and Francis has shown the where with all to put consistency into his game and show he can play in pressure situations- rating up to B+
On the negatives: inability of coaches to effectively implement any Plan B as part of the team strategy, inability of the leadership group to change the course of a game when opposition pressure is applied, tendency when things go wrong in games for players to finger point, drop off in senior player skills, failure to maintain fitness level of players and minimise avoidable injuries.
3-4 out of 10 for me.
We made the finals, positive, we also had some enjoyable wins, so positive there. Parish improved, Tippa had a good year, Stringer had a good year, Redman was good, McKenna was good, Saad was great.
Negative - I don’t think many players took big steps forward. McGrath didn’t take the big step forward that many were expecting (particularly when you compare him to a Taranto or McCluggage). Langford didn’t come on. Laverde didn’t come on. Draper got injured. Shiel didn’t have a great year in my view, and is looking like a risky trade. McKernan and Brown are still bit part players. Hooker and Hurley look like the end is coming earlier than we might have thought. Smith, Daniher and Fantasia got injured and might be coming from a long way back next year. No other young players really stepped up and showed they would be stars.
I think a lot is going to have to go right for us next year if we want to contend, no matter who the coach is.
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Worst possible mark. F.
Winning a finals was a pass mark.
Some said top 4 even.
We were finally ready to make our mark others said.
So what happened?
Hooker injured in the pre-season, multiple injuries to others. Lots on restricted minutes before we’ve played a damn game.
We roll onto JLT1 and get rolled by Carlton easily, bar a 15 minute patch in the last were we saved face.
It’s OK the clappers said, it’s only JLT, don’t panic.
JLT 2 and we get rolled easily.
It’s OK the clappers said, it’s only a JLT.
Round 1, big hopes. Utterly destroyed in a pathetic, humiliating manner.
Zerrett and friends jogging along.
Peter Turk the fitness boss quits afterwards. Hmmm. He knew.
Round 2 and the Saints run us over, groundhog day.
Anzac Day was apparently amazing because we almost won a game was very amusing by the braindead happy clappers.
Loses to the bottom team in Sydney, lol. At least Faz played his one of few good games that night.
Managed to play decent football for 5 wins straight, which included 3-4 of them by around a kick.
Luck runs out and Port bend us over, Dogs kick 23 straight on us. Pies do us in a canter.
Fitness is an utter shambles.
Playing injured blokes all year to no benefit. Now they’ll miss pre-season time.
Blokes that are cooked still have years left on contracts. Zaka, Hooker are beyond cooked.
Most of our best players were players that I can’t see improving much (aka Tippa, Stringer.)
Parish our most improved thankfully (but the coaching panel didn’t see him worthy of being in the team for the first month or so? And he still barely manages 70% game time…)
Langford at best went sideways, all stats suggest he went backwards after all the hype. Does a great shoey hours after a finals loss tho.
McGrath I feel made minimal improvement.
Redman was a good addition. Saad was good all year, McKenna had a good year too.
Guelfi and Snelling were handy finds, not game changing ones. Zerk looked OK for his one game. Clarke was great and then was equally horrible.
Francis again saved his best for the last game of the year.
Both rucks were diabolical all year.
Daniher, Smith and a fit others will help us but they won’t improve the midfield. Smith might, but not enough to win us a final alone.
Underbelly of the team stinks and none of the returning players can stop us shtting the bed again in finals.
Frankly, I think the club is just happy being the underdog exciting team that never does anything.
Bring on the insta shots from Zaka.
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After reading comments by Worsfold, Madden and Sheedy it seems the Club is pretty happy with the season. Probably graded it A-!
This highlights the contented acceptance of mediocrity by the Club and is a reason why nothing is likely to ever change.
Probably will hand out participation medals to themselves
4/10.
Only two genuinely impressive four quarter efforts come to mind (Bris and Norf early in the season).
Finally got a good look at Redman, Clarke. Francis, Parish, McGrath, Saad, Walla, Stringer, Ambrose usually good to watch and shown to be best-22 locks and necessary crew for the next few years.
Injuries, bad tactics, appalling skills all made most games tough to watch.
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We’ll be having the same discussions next year. Nothing will change. We are the definition of groundhog day. We will rock up round 1 next season, get rinsed, and these things are guaranteed to happen.
- We will bomb it long forward, every time, and bemoan whoever it is, taking intercept marks
- We will kick long and wide on kick ins.
- We will reference key phrases such as “time to gel” and point to learning caracella’s game plan, that it’s not going to click straight away.
- Reference What learnings we took from the game, with a couple of heppell shaka shaka she’ll be right cobbers, for good measure
We are ESSINGTON
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C-
We were motoring along fine at 11-7 and then fell in a heap at the end, perhaps as much due to injuries as anything else. Helped keep Hawks and Roos out of finals, so that’s something.
Season was a hard Fail
Unsatisfying. Had we done our job in the home and away, I think we would have earnt a home final and might have that finals monkey off the clubs back.
Negatives: Didnt think we played our best football all year. Plenty of reasons, but to go an entire season without really great team footy for 4 quarters is poor. Oh and the worst performance I have seen an Essendon team put in and at such a crucial part of the season is absolutely unforgivable. I am glad there wasnt a knee jerk reaction, and now creates the right sort of talk about change at the club.
Positives: We had some good halves(eg Adelaide away) and some sensational individual performaces(eg Walla v Brisbane/Norf).
Injuries to key players let us get games into new guys.
Our backline when it does get support from up the field is very very good.
Felt like a very short year.
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D
I really didn’t enjoy the season, and even started losing interest after the St Kilda loss. If we can’t prepare for a season it’s going to be the same thing every year.
That’s a good point. I enjoyed last season a lot more.