Hey you change that back choppy chop because Conor belongs at the bombers in winter and back home during summer doing a new style of (gaelic) pre-season.
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Another thrashing coming up.
Essendon is deciding whether Joe Daniher faces Geelong on Sunday after his return to the side
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Joe Daniher celebrates a goal against Hawthorn in round 14. Picture: AFL Photos
ESSENDON continues to take a game-by-game approach with Joe Daniher as the Bombers weigh up whether to play the star forward against Geelong on Sunday.
Daniher returned last week from more than a year on the sidelines due to his ongoing groin troubles but will be in for his third game in 11 days if he faces the Cats.
Bombers coach John Worsfold said the club would consult with the restricted free agent after Friday’s light session before making a call on his availability.
“Joe’s pulled up really well which is great from his first couple of hitouts, but we will assess him today post-training and make a call this afternoon about the best management of his load going forward,” he said.
DONS’ CONTRACT CRUNCH McGrath, Saad, Joe, more
"The shorter game times are making a big difference in how players are pulling up post-game. We’ll weigh that up with his workload versus what we’ve got coming up.
"We’re weighing up how he feels overall so today’s a pretty light session as they all are between the five day breaks so we don’t have to see anything in particular from Joe. It’s around assessing exactly how he’s feeling today and then us picking a side that we think takes everything into account.
“He’s a big chance to play on Sunday.”
Daniher booted 3.3 in his brilliant return game against Hawthorn but was wasteful in front of goal against West Coast on Tuesday night, when he kicked 0.3 and missed some straightforward shots as Essendon was making its charge.
The 26-year-old accuracy in front of goal has been an issue throughout his career and Worsfold said the long rehabilitation process meant he was unable to focus on his set-shot kicking for most of his time out of the game.
“It would be fair to say that through a long part of his rehab he wasn’t able to do a lot of kicking but in the last eight or 10 weeks he’s been doing full training and has been able to do his loads and practice his shots at goal,” Worsfold said.
“That’s like any sportsperson is doing in any sport: practice your craft and you become expert at it. Joe had a big layoff and his goal should be to work back and become the best he can at that part of his game.”
Mitch Hibberd, Brayden Ham, Tom Cutler and Kobe Mutch loom as possible replacements for gun midfielder Andrew McGrath, who will miss the rest of the season with a syndesmosis injury.
He is the latest Bomber to be struck by the syndesmosis curse, with Jake Stringer and Jayden Laverde other casualties this year.
Dyson Heppell, too, suffered a fractured ankle in a training incident, leaving Essendon as one of the biggest injury-hit clubs since returning to the field after the COVID-19 shutdown of the competition.
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Five key questions: Worsfold presser
Senior coach John Worsfold on Joe Daniher, Dyson Heppell, replacing Andrew McGrath and facing the Cats.
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Senior coach John Worsfold is readying for a huge test against the Cats on Sunday. (Photo: AFL Photos)
Senior coach John Worsfold spoke to the media on Friday morning in the lead-up to Sunday’s clash with Geelong at the Gabba.
Here’s how he responded to the key questions.
Will Joe Daniher play on Sunday?
"Joe’s pulled up really well which is great from his first couple of hitouts, but we will assess him today post-training and make a call this afternoon about the best management of his load going forward.
"We’re weighing up how he feels overall so today’s a pretty light session as they all are between the five-day breaks so we don’t have to see anything in particular from Joe. It’s around assessing exactly how he’s feeling today and then us picking a side that we think takes everything into account.
“He’s a big chance to play on Sunday.”
Who do you look at to come in for Andrew McGrath?
“There are a number of guys like Mitch Hibberd, Brayden Ham, Tom Cutler and Kobe Mutch, who have been playing a lot of football. Any of those guys would be able to come in and play for a role for us, but we’ll assess that post-training today.”
How has Dyson Heppell pulled up?
“With all the players coming off long-term injury layoffs, we’re really conscious of how they pull up. ‘Hepp’ has pulled up pretty well. Overall, he was happy. We’ll see how he is today when he gets his legs ticking over and his heart-rate up again, but I’m fairly confident he’s going to be ready to back up off this break.”
The club’s had a pretty bad run with syndesmosis injuries. Has there been an assessment on why that’s the case? Is there a common factor or is it just bad luck?
"It’s a tough one. There’s no doubt syndesmosis across the league has become more prevalent than what we’ve seen in the past.
"There’s always a risk that with less training volumes and the players having that big break after round one, you’re not quite as well prepared for the rigours of playing AFL footy. All coaches knew that a three-week mini-pre-season after the break was barely enough to get the players ready. It was the bare minimum that we would have needed to have the players ready.
“(Because of that) There’s risks elevated with collision injuries, the way you land, and the way you read the cues of the way the game is unfolding around you. We haven’t been able to do any in-depth research of what the numbers are and why these are occurring, but that would be one potential factor.”
Andrew McGrath has joined Jayden Laverde and Jake Stringer as Essendon’s syndesmosis victims this year. (Photo: AFL Photos)
What do you see as the biggest threat in Geelong’s game that you’ll have to counter on Sunday?
"They’re just a very mature, experienced team that have been together for a long time. They’ve got threats all over the ground - a very stable and strong back half and have still got super talent across midfield with Duncan, Dangerfield etcetera. ‘Tomahawk’ (Tom Hawkins) is just in awesome form. He’s been outstanding up forward.
“There are threats all over the place, but hopefully we can show some of our great young talent coming through up against those guys, play the footy we want to play and see how it stacks up against maybe the premiership favourites.”
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It is scary to think this is our depth or developing midfield considering we have effectively a full list to pick from.
We desperately need to hit the draft for mids to develop.
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They should have done that last year and they didn’t so why would they change to do the obvious this year?
Currently we don’t have any forwards that can kick goals so I have come up with a new game plan. Every player except for Tippa remains in the back 50 metre arch for the entire game to defend any score. We keep Tippa in the forward 50.
At the very least we will force a draw and if we are fortunate enough to get the ball to Tippa we can even win.
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What do you call this game plan that you speak of?
A game plan that is slightly on the defensive side.
I am certain a lot of learnings will come from it.
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This is the game I thought we could win out of the weagles, cats and port. I hope I’m right.
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Yes, I agree. We’ve won four out of the last six against them.
We’re going to go in hard, kick to position and win easily by
a couple of points.
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against geelong ?
you might want to check that stat, cos we haven’t beaten them 4 out of the last 6.
they’ve beaten us 6 out of the last 8 times, and that’s going back to 2012, going back further it gets worse.
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Yes, you’re right, @darkknightpheonix - I read the results carelessly… My mistake.
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Was gonna say, we’d have been lucky to have beaten them 4 times in the last 15 years.
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Sad but one of the highlights of the last 15 yrs was the Melksham win.
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correct, 4 wins in 15 years back to 05
13 wins to the cats in that time.
So we’re due then?
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Or two shots when they handball at their feet, way more fun.
that’s a similar mentality another poster had when i pointed out we still had to play 6/7 of the top 8 sides along time ago, “we got to roll em sometime”
we are 0-4 against top 8 sides since then.
but sure, yeah we’re “due” for a win, just cos 
Have I mistakenly come to the deadly serious thread? Sorry
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