An injury to defender Ben McKay has propelled Essendon further into uncharted territory with its key-position stocks.
McKay will miss the Bombers’ trip to Brisbane this week after his foot was trodden on in their Dreamtime at the ‘G win over Richmond last Friday.
The 27-year-old becomes the 10th Bomber above 190cm to be sidelined in an injury-plagued campaign at Tullamarine.
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Sam Draper, Nick Bryan, Zach Reid, Nik Cox, Lewis Hayes, Harrison Jones, Jordan Ridley, Kyle Langford and Tom Edwards are all out through injury.
Essendon coach Brad Scott said McKay, regardless of the severity of his foot scans, was not getting up for the Lions with travel and a shortened break.
“We’re still assessing, he had a scan this morning, so we’ll get those results, but it’s just too tight a timeframe to turn that around for him,” he said.
“He’ll be unavailable and hopefully we’ll have an update on where it sits later this afternoon or tomorrow.”
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The Bombers could take four picks to the mid-season draft on Wednesday night and play one of their selections as soon as Thursday night.
Scott confirmed he was in an unprecedented position as a senior coach but was grateful for the opportunity it had created.
“It is (unprecedented) but if I had had it previously, fortunately we’ve got a mid-season draft to mitigate that somewhat,” Scott said.
“That’s far from perfect either, really, it’s just a different challenge for us. We’re in a difficult spot in terms of availability.
“The way I look at these things is it’ll create some opportunity for others. If we had 100 per cent availability (with our) list, we wouldn’t have unearthed six debutants this year.
“Angus Clarke wouldn’t have got an opportunity last week, which he clearly took. We’ll give opportunity to others … we can be down in the dumps and focus on the negatives or be optimistic about the opportunity it creates.”
Scott admitted the repetitive curveballs he’d faced this year had forced adjustments to the way the Bombers needed to play.
But he’s found a “silver lining” in the “blank canvas” of the next wave of Bomber youngsters.
“We have but the reality is we’re always iterating the way we play anyway, what we’re ultimately trying to build with this team is always going to evolve,” he said.
“It’s a real challenge having to make challenges to the way we play based on the personnel we’ve got available.
“But it’s really interesting, the younger players we’ve had come in have actually been fairly easy to coach because they’re a blank canvas.
“They’ve come in and almost to a man have executed what we’ve asked them to. Again, that’s the silver lining to getting young players in who are really eager to learn and keen to execute what we’re coaching.”
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