By Andrew Wu
When Brad Scott completes the review into Essendon’s doomsday defeat, he will be hit by an inescapable truth: his senior players let him down.
The fateful chain of events that killed off another Bombers season without a finals victory were in motion long before Mac Andrew, the villain of the night for the partisan crowd of 29,401, realised a boyhood dream with a towering pack mark and goal after the siren.
Mac Andrew of the Suns kicks the winning goal after the siren.Credit: Getty Images
The dissection of the final passage of play will make for grim viewing, but the reality is the Bombers should already have had the four points banked.
It will be of little solace to anyone who dons the sash, but the Bombers did so much right in the last quarter. The ball was in their forward half for 84 per cent of the term. The inside-50 count was 19-8 in their favour. They won contested balls by nine. Scoring shots were 11 to two.
The Bombers kicked 1.9 from their 11, Gold Coast two goals from their two.
To appropriate dry medical humour, Essendon’s operation was a success, but the patient is dead.
Even the most fatalistic of Bombers fans could not have envisaged their night at the footy ending in such traumatic fashion - with their club’s season shot, the one-point loss ending Gold Coast’s comical run of 16 losses on the road.
Errors were made at both ends of the ground by players who Scott would not expect. Barring a series of improbable results, the 7281 days since Essendon’s last finals win will grow by at least another 365.
Jake Stringer fluffed three shots at goal, all gettable by his standards and those of less accomplished players. Two were set shots, another a snap on the run he has customarily drilled throughout his 210-game career.
Twice from about 35 metres out with little angle to speak of, Sam Draper poked at set shots and missed. He is a recidivist. Three weeks ago, he squandered shots that would have sealed victory against Adelaide. He had worse moments to come.
Bombers coach Brad Scott addresses his players.Credit: AFL Photos via Getty Images
The occasion was too big even for the captain, Zach Merrett, who blew a snap he would expect to convert.
Cruelly, Jade Gresham was denied the goal they could not miss by a correctly paid free kick for a push on Connor Budarick, which would have sealed the game.
“We’ve really only got ourselves to blame. We did enough to win, we just didn’t convert on the scoreboard,” Bombers defender Mason Redman said.
The disallowed goal sparked a passage of play that enabled the Suns a rare foray forward, which the Bombers could not repel.
Holding on for dear life, the Bombers did plenty right again. They set the field up as they had trained. At each of the five stoppages in the last 90 seconds, their midfielders stuck to their opponents like limpets. They had two to three extra men behind the ball, clogging up enough space to force the Suns into dirty possessions.
Thrown into defence as a spare man, forward Kyle Langford nailed his opening plays. Unguarded, he effected a spoil on Sam Collins’ first kick inside 50, then followed with a desperate tackle on Nick Holman that a marginally more sympathetic umpire would have rewarded with holding the ball.
“I haven’t reviewed it in detail but live, we had everything we wanted,” Scott said. “You can’t use the runner the last two minutes. We had it set as we would have liked it.”
They got more right at the final stoppage, winning the clearance through Stringer, whose handball found Jye Caldwell. Under heavy pressure, he scrambled a dribbling kick out to the defensive side of the wing.
If Draper had halved the contest with Collins, the Dons should have been able to run down the remaining 21 seconds on the clock. But for the second time in a minute, the ruckman was beaten pointless by Collins, who broke away to launch a speculative kick deep inside 50.
Such balls create heart in mouth moments for those in the stands, but they should be comfortably spoiled.
“I feel like if the ball goes to that marking contest 10 times, I reckon we get the spoil down nine times,” Bombers defender Mason Redman said.
Except, the Bombers defence lost its concentration.
When Collins gained possession, Andrew was outnumbered two to one by his direct opponent Jayden Laverde and Langford, Essendon’s first two picks from the 2014 draft who have played 129 and 151 games respectively.
But neither thought to get an arm across Andrew, allowing the Suns forward an unimpeded run and jump to mark the Sherrin.
Nineteen seconds remained on the clock but Scott and Damien Hardwick know it will be the last kick in the game. Andrew does not. Yet.
The clock is stopped because of the blood rule. It takes 50 seconds before the siren can be rung.
This must feel like an eternity for Andrew, who is taking deep breaths at the top of his mark waiting for the replacement Essendon player, Dylan Shiel, to take his position. A week ago, Carlton’s Mitch McGovern, a man almost 10 years his senior, lost his nerve. Andrew, though, relishes the situation.
“He absolutely loves that moment, he lives for it,” Hardwick said. “That’s the sort of player he is. I’ve been lucky to coach some match-winners along the way, he’s a match-winner.”
As Bombers players slump to the turf, Andrew has his index finger on his lips. Andrew’s jumper punch at half-time earned him a chorus of boos from the red and black faithful. His knockout punch at full-time silenced them.