Essendon stuck in mediocrity - what’s the cause? Jon Ralph looks at 15 reasons behind lacklustre season
There’s many reasons Essendon’s 2019 is backfiring in putrid fashion. Jon Ralph looks at what’s gone wrong so far at the Bombers - including injuries, the draw and the stars who aren’t hitting their target.
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As Dyson Heppell said earlier this week, Essendon’s season is still well and truly alive.
But at 3-5 and having dropped a game they just couldn’t afford to lose, they are a long way behind the eight ball.
A club that might have to finish the season 13-9 to ensure they play finals would need to win 10 of the next 14 games to ensure that aim.
For a club seen as a premiership contender, it is another horror start to a season for a club wanting to win its first final since 2004.
Here are the 15 reasons why a club that hasn’t won a final for 15 years is battling to make an impact.
Essendon’s Devon Smith on David Myers’ kick, Dyson Heppell’s smile and Dane Rampe’s post climb
Dane Rampe faces AFL grilling for his bizarre night in Sydney’s win over Essendon
AFL 2019: Essendon forward Orazio Fantasia suffers yet another injury
1. Injuries
If we are to mark the Dons hard we need to accept reality.
In the pre-season a Dons side desperate to avoid the injury toll of the previous summer got exactly the same dose of injuries. The likes of Cale Hooker, Dyson Heppell, Marty Gleeson, Zach Merrett, Orazio Fantasia and Joe Daniher all battled various ailments. It’s no secret many of those players have never hit their stride this year. The injuries just keep coming mid-season, with Daniher battling all year and Fantasia the latest today to come down with a soft-tissue injury.
2. The draw
Essendon was downright putrid in its loss to GWS in Round 1. But of its three losses so far they have been defeated by first-placed Geelong, second-placed Collingwood and fourth-placed GWS. But a team wanting to play finals needed scalps and instead it has a great win over Brisbane as well as knocking over the Roos and Melbourne when they were at their lowest ebb.
3. Essendon is just mediocre at most things.
A deeper dive into the stats shows a team wanting to excel doesn’t have a single dominant stats category. When they surge with intoxicating speed through the corridor they wow the fans. But their KPIs shows a lot of competition rankings between 10th-12th.
They are eight for points for and 11th for points against. A team wanting to allow 10 less points in defence per game instead gives up about exactly the same - 83.5 points compared to 82.2 last year.
They are 10th for disposal differential, 11th for contested ball differential, 10th for uncontested ball differential, 8th for inside 50 differential. It’s very mehhh, very uninspiring
4. Dylan Shiel was at least racking up huge numbers before this week, even when he turned the ball over. Against Sydney he was kept to a season-low 17 possessions as George Hewett tagged him early. Of the 76 players in the competition to have registered 100 kicks, he has the 12th-worst rating at negative six (-6) per cent. Of those players he has the second-lowest hit rate. So he attempts difficult kicks but is hitting them at the second-lowest hit rate. No wonder the midfield-forward connection rate is so bad.
5. Devon Smith has fallen off a cliff as he deals with a niggling knee injury he will manage all year. He averages just 68 ranking points, down from 98 last year. Last year he was clearly footy’s best tackler with more than eight per game. This year he still has 5.9 tackles but nowhere near the impact. Of Essendon players to drop away from 2018 to 2019. David Myers is next (negative 25 ranking points).
6. Essendon don’t have a consistently elite player. Anthony McDonald-Tipungwuti and Orazio Fantasia are the single elite players by Champion ratings, and one is inconsistent and the other freshly injured.
Of their above average players only Zach Merrett and Dyson Heppell fit into that category. So they don’t a key position or midfield player in the elite category - damning given the trends of the modern game.
7. Essendon is seen as a run-and-gun side, but the back half run also comes with risk.
Essendon is the second-highest scoring side from the defensive half but has also given up the most points - 33 points per game.
Conor McKenna has given up the most back half turnovers in the league, with Dylan Shiel, Adam Saad and Michael Hurley following him in that statistic.
8. The ruck situation is dire. Tom Bellchambers is running around with a sore ankle Bellchambers work around the ground is just OK - he ranks below average - but while his hitout-to-advantage rate is fine he doesn’t get his hands to enough hitouts to give them an advantage in the midfield enough given the Dons rank 15th in hitouts.
9. Zac Clarke. He is playing as a result of the injuries and Bellchambers being banged up. But Clarke butchered two easy chances against Sydney and is the second-worst ranked ruckman of the 29 to play so far this year. He shows glimpses of talent can be an incredibly frustrating player to watch.
10. Aaron Francis is only 21 so needs more time to justify his amazing potential. But he has been a victim of circumstance that means he hasn’t followed on from the brilliant last month of 2018. Dropped after Round 3 because of Cale Hooker’s return, he played VFL and then has pushed forward in the past fortnight. He has had 12 combined score involvements but no goals so far and finds it hard to get separation of his opponent. Patrick Ambrose has stood up as a miserly key back and Mason Redman looks like anything as an intercepting mid-sizer. But at his best Francis is a contested marking interceptor who sets up Essendon with brilliant field kicking. It hasn’t happened this year for a variety of reasons.
11. At one stage Kyle Langford looked a special talent and Jayden Laverde could have turned into an inside bull. This year Langford has been injured, played VFL at times and generally been mediocre when he has played AFL after last year’s 16-game breakout year. Laverde has played only two VFL games and battled ankle issues.
12. The coach. How do you quantify how many goals a coach is worth to an AFL team? It’s impossible. But Essendon have enough talent on their list. It’s why they have been so hyped this pre-season. Would Alastair Clarkson have a list with this talent at 3-5? Since the start of last year they are 15-15 - distinctly mediocre. On Friday night Fox Footy’s experts were scathing of Essendon’s inability to round up the spare Sydney player in those frantic final minutes. John Worsfold is a man of great integrity and a great man manager. But it’s not often that games are won in the Essendon coaches box.
Dane Rampe is expected to be issued with a double-barrelled “please explain†from the AFL today, reports @LaurenHeraldSun.https://t.co/Vrnag7jIRP#AFLSwansDons pic.twitter.com/2vdSBlr0Uw
— SuperFooty (AFL) (@superfooty) May 13, 2019
13. Luck. Sometimes you need a helping hand from the umpires or an idiotic rival player. Dane Rampe’s brain fade was a clear-cut free kick that should have seen Essendon steal the game. The AFL justified its five late free kicks on Anzac Day but the Dons might have stolen that game with the rub of the green, or at least a handful of key late calls. It would have put them 5-3 instead of 3-5.
14. Mental strength. How can a team front up and get belted by 72 points in Round 1 against GWS and then admit later they didn’t realise how hard they had to work to win games of football. It’s one of footy’s intangibles - turning up to play - but the 0-2 start to the year after losses to GWS and St Kilda will have them behind the eight ball all year.
15. Not enough matchwinners so far. Who was prepared to drag Essendon back into the game like Patrick Cripps has tried to do so far this year. Dyson Heppell has tried but is more of an accumulator, Daniher has had a single good game this year, Hooker has his hands full with elite forwards and Shiel has ruined his best work with poor kicking. Who is prepared to do it against Fremantle and save the club’s season?
Originally published as Essendon stuck in mediocrity - what’s the cause? Jon Ralph looks at 15 reasons behind lacklustre season
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