Bombers flag ‘extraordinary measures’ to improve over off-season as coach urges players to harness ‘sick feeling’

Brad Scott says his Essendon players will enter their off-season “with a sick feeling in their stomach”, with the coach vowing to take “extraordinary measures” to improve the playing list and overall standards after an alarming late-season fall from grace.

The Bombers kicked just three goals in their paltry 70-point loss to Collingwood, which came six days after a horror 126-point loss to the Giants.

Essendon after Round 17 sat fifth on the ladder with a percentage of 107.1, but could finish their 2023 campaign as low as 13th if Round 24 results go against them.

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Scott lamented his side’s “horrendous start” against the Pies – they conceded the first 10 goals of the game – before declaring the club would take “extraordinary measures” to bridge the gap between the Bombers and the AFL’s top teams.

“We’ve just got a heap of work to do … nothing really changes from that perspective. But the last few weeks in particular, it’s just proven that where we’re at at the moment, we need to get a lot better to bridge the gap to the best teams,” he told reporters.

“We need to improve our list, we need to improve our football department – we need to improve right across the board.”

Scott added: “This is the first opportunity I’ve got to drive an off-season … as to what that looks like and the expectations that we have, because the observations of the last nine to 12 months is nowhere near where it needs to be. So we’ll get that right.”

Despite heading into the season with few expectations under a new coach, the Bombers were in finals contention for nearly the entire season. But a poor last seven weeks – which included big losses to the Cats, Bulldogs, Giants and Magpies and two scratchy wins over bottom-two teams West Coast and North Melbourne – has taken the gloss off the early-season gains, according to Scott.

“The recency bias is real. In a perverse way, the players leave with a sick feeling in their stomach – and that should drive your off-season,” he said.

“If you’d said at the start of the year we’d win 11 games, be fifth on the ladder with six weeks to go in the season and be in contention to play finals, you’d say: ‘I’m not sure that’s exactly where we’re at, I’m not sure where we’re that far advanced.’

“The season in totality, there’s been some good steps taken forward, but we took some big steps backwards in the last two weeks. What do you put that down to? It’s not an excuse, but the reality is we just can’t cover our best players being out and bringing players back from long-term injuries who just can’t play at the level yet.

“I thought tonight showed – and I’m not going to go into detail as to what they are – some really, really clear areas that we just need to fix and get better at. Fundamental stuff … just simple things like clean hands, handballing – like really basic stuff that we can train and improve. And that’s my job.

“You go back over some of the senior players’ careers, they’ve been through a fair bit of turmoil and a fair bit of instability. They just need really strong direction – and that’s my job to provide that and my job to provide the framework for the off-season and preseason that’s going to put us in a position to compete against the best, because it’s no fun sitting here in August without a game in two weeks’ time.”

Asked if the group needed to get fitter over the off-season, Scott said: “I don’t think it’s a fitness issue. We’ve run the best running teams in the competition to wins or very close losses this year. There’s a difference between training hard – and I think everyone trains hard – to what an AFL lifestyle looks like, so that’s the area I’m more concerned about and need to address.”

The Bombers had one of the youngest and least experienced lists in the competition this season, yet are expected to be major players in the trade and free agency space with ample salary cap room.

They’re right in the mix for key defender Ben McKay, while they’ve also been linked to St Kilda free agent Jade Gresham and Port Adelaide forward Orazio Fantasia.

But the Bombers face the prospect of losing a couple of players, with Brandon Zerk-Thatcher heavily linked to a move to Port Adelaide while there’s a contract stalemate between the club and free agent Darcy Parish.

Scott said the Bombers needed a bigger group of senior leaders.

“Recency bias is a real thing. If we’d performed really well the last two weeks and just missed out on the finals, the risk is everyone thinks ‘we’re going OK’ – and potentially we don’t make the hard decisions that we need to. Now the hard decisions become easier,” he said.

“What that means in terms of list management, it’s too early to tell. But we’re certainly in a very, very strong position in terms of list management to be able to improve our list.

Asked if he thought Parish would stay, Scott said: “It’s a hypothetical, but all I know from experience is when a player desperately wants to stay at your club and the club desperately wants to keep him, the deal gets done.

“I hope so (that’s the case again), but again I’m clearly not involved in the negotiation. But he’s really committed to us and we’re really committed to him, so they’ll sort it out for sure.”