Essendon coach Ash Cavigan discusses disappointing end to season
Essendon is promising a “vigorous and honest review” of its 2020-21 Premier Cricket season that saw the club miss finals and waste James Seymour’s brilliance.
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Essendon coach Ash Cavigan has promised a thorough review of the Bombers’ disappointing 2020-21 campaign.
The Premier Cricket power finished 10th, failing to make finals for the first time since 2016-17 and wasting James Seymour’s brilliant season.
Stunningly, the Bombers scored the fifth most runs of any club and took the sixth most wickets but will rue costly loses to Casey-South Melbourne, Ringwood and Footscray.
“We’re pretty disappointed with the year and I’m certainly keen to review it vigorously and honestly because we’ve got to bring some positive change,” Cavigan said.
“We’ve got some senior players with some really good individual records but we need to find some team success.
“We’ll continue to develop our youngsters, I was really pleased with Donovan Toohey and James Ryan, Liam Molloy had a really strong year, Cam McClure was terrific.
“There’s lots of positives, lot of improvement across the club, all our teams won more games this year than last year but we’re measured on our First XI performance.
“We quickly touched on it post game (on Saturday), the reality of our year was we won eight games – one more than last year – beat four teams in the eight and still didn’t make it.”
The Bombers’ season ended with a six-wicket defeat to Prahran at Windy Hill.
Sent in, the home team never settled and was dismissed for 107 with James Ryan’s 40 and Liam Bowe’s 3-18 the only bright spots.
James Seymour managed two and was pipped by Geelong Eamonn Vines as the competition’s No.1 run-scorer.
However, the star opener finishes a stunning campaign with 822 runs in 13 games with three centuries and an incredible average of 91.33.
Seymour also scored an unbeaten century for a Premier Cricket XI against Victoria and a ton for Sydney Grade Cricket club Randwick-Petersham.
The reigning Ryder Medallist is among the favourites to go back-to-back for Premier Cricket’s highest individual award.
Cavigan lamented the lack of support Seymour received this season.
“I don’t think that’s unfair (to say Seymour’s season was wasted), good teams don’t leave it to one person and he didn’t have much support,” he said.
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“It’s a funny game cricket, we came into the season feeling good about our top order and a focus to improve our middle and lower order.
“We wanted more runs from our tail end and we did that but then the top order just had one of those years.”
With the ball spearhead Matt Doric was again outstanding, collecting 29 wickets – equal fifth in the competition – at an average of 19.97.
Liam Bowe contributed 25 scalps (13th overall), while Tom O’Donnell and Cam McClure netted 19 apiece.
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