Battling Bombers stare down unwanted record

By Anna Harrington

Essendon can’t do anything but stay galvanised as they stare down the demoralising prospect of notching a club-record 18th consecutive defeat, says coach Brad Scott.

The Bombers suffered their 17th loss in a row during Sunday night’s 34-point trouncing by the Western Bulldogs.

Essendon, who next face Melbourne at Adelaide Oval on Saturday, previously experienced such a run of misfortune in 2016 when players were suspended because of the supplements saga.

The current streak includes last season’s 13-game losing run when they were cruelled by injuries.

“It’s just a fact that can’t be argued. There’s no point,” Scott said.

“No one puts the number up with an asterisk next to it and says ‘For 90 per cent of those games, you could hardly field a team’. No one cares about that. And I don’t care either.

“It’s just one of those facts that you have to deal with and it potentially can get demoralising, but that’s what we’re fighting against, and that’s the challenge that we’re all faced with.

“I’m faced with it as coach, our leaders are faced with it and people ask a lot of the time ‘What do you want from your leaders?’ Well, they need to keep the group galvanised, and they need to perform on-field.”

Scott was confident the winless stretch wasn’t taking its toll.

“On the surface, you’d be concerned about it, but I don’t see it with the group,” he said.

“I have a lot of belief in the character of the group and the individual players that we’ve recruited, and they’re showing that fight without the reward at the moment, but I’m very optimistic that they’re made of the right stuff.”

The Essendon boss refused to write off the season despite a 0-4 start.

“You can go through history and lots of sides have started like this, even worse, 0-5, 0-6 and played finals … we’re not anywhere near starting to look at finals as out of reach or anything like that,” Scott said.

“But we’re not focused on those things anyway. We’re focused on consistent improvement of our players.”

Jordan Ridley should return, but luckless defender Zach Reid sat out the final quarter with a fresh hamstring concern.

“He wanted to start the last quarter, but … he was aware of his hamstring,” he said.

“It’s hard to get a definitive answer out of the medical guys, because with Reidy, there’s an extra layer of concern there… I took it out of his hands, just given his history, I wasn’t prepared to take the risk. But we’ll get it checked, and hopefully he’s right and I’m wrong.”

Meanwhile, Gold Coast coach Damien Hardwick concedes his AFL premiership fancies were handed a wake-up call by Melbourne in their shock first loss of the season.

Unbeaten at 3-0 before their bye, the Suns arrived at the MCG on Sunday as hot favourites but were taught a lesson by the exuberant Demons.

Hardwick conceded his side was “spanked” in the midfield, with ruckman Jarrod Witts well beaten by Max Gawn.

He added the Suns’ pressure on their opponents was “laughable”, but rejected suggestions his players had been complacent in the 16.13 (109) to 14.5 (89) defeat.

“We got beaten in and around contest and they were harder and tougher than us,” Hardwick said.

“Every now and then this game will give you a wake-up call and give you a kick right in the nuts, and today that was it for us.

“Our midfield’s better than that. We know that, everyone knows that, but we just didn’t have the desired result today and we had too many players down.”

Gold Coast had been hot favourites to secure a win that would have seen them equal a club-record winning start to the season.

“It’s disappointing, but I think people underestimate that side across the road,” Hardwick said.

“They’ve got a great blend of experience and a spattering of youth.

“We look at narratives and people look at the ladder last year, but the ladder last year is worth shit.”

Reigning Brownlow Medallist Matt Rowell finished with 13 disposals and four clearances.

Hardwick eased Rowell  back into action against Melbourne on limited minutes after his finger injury.

“He’s only going to get better as the season progresses,” the coach said.

“The game was really, really quick and he was probably like the rest of our midfield – he was OK without being outstanding.

“When you miss seven or eight weeks of footy it does take a little bit of time.”

Gold Coast face another huge test against Sydney in Gather Round and are unlikely to regain star recruit Christian Petracca from his hamstring injury until the following week.

“He’s going to give himself a chance, but what we’ve got to remember is it’s a marathon, not a sprint,” Hardwick said.

“It’s a very important game next week and we understand that, but he is an incredibly important player to our long-term future and we’ve got to make sure we make the right call.”