I’ve been following the Bombers and football generally for over 50 years. In every single one of those years there have been good teams and bad teams. And one absolutely consistent them over all those years has been that the good teams were fast. They had pace. They moved the ball quickly. They left opposition players floundering in their wake.
Until now. Essendon have broken the mould. Smashed the stereotype. Essendon last night were TOO fast.
It was a idiot comment by worsfold and a cheap shot at one of our better players on the night. I’d rather him call out Hurley, tippa, joe or stringer than single out McKenna. I’m guessing if he had his time back he probably wouldn’t of said it. Our forwards were not working hard enough. Don’t ever remember us being too fast for our forwards, ever
I agree that he may want to retract naming names. Never a great idea post-game. He should have remained his stone-faced self. Did you understand what he meant about constantly looking for the fast-play option despite what was happening up-field??
Yeah I do, I ripped my hair out at the number of times we ran forward and had no options, but I thought that was an indication of our workrate. Our forwards pushed up far too hard and didn’t work back hard enough. I’d rather not blame half backs for being “too fast” and instead question the work rate of our forwards
I thought hooker was covering the ground well, I saw him work back pretty hard a lot for no reward, but the other guys were generally poor imo
I think singling McKenna out was the main problem with his comment. Sure, we didn’t enact plan B as he would have liked. And McKenna probably was part of that. But if the rest of the team think that the same plan B involves walking around not making options to control the ball…
If Plan B isn’t working because the team isn’t working hard to provide options to allow us to slow it down, then Conor implementing Plan C - “Beat your opponent and then make something happening by breaking a line and hitting a target” is a good option.
Haven’t watched the presser yet but one indication of a very good football team is the ability to control the tempo of games. We’re certainly not there yet but us definitely something we should be working on.