Essendon must make finals after 15-year ‘horror show’

Next week’s trip to Perth to face Fremantle is Essendon’s biggest game in seven years. If the Bombers miss the finals everything is up for grabs, including John Worsfold’s future.

Essendon coach John Worsfold.

At the height of the supplements saga a besieged Essendon travelled across the Nullarbor to knock off Fremantle in the final moments of their Round 3 contest.

The scenes as Jobe Watson and James Hird roared in emotion singing Essendon’s theme song showed this club would not be broken despite the crisis unfolding in front of them.

Next week Essendon travels to Perth to take on Fremantle on Saturday night in the club’s most important contest since that day.

Essendon’s performance was a train wreck against the Bulldogs, a contest where you could not look away despite its one-sided nature given the ghoulish nature of what was unfolding.

Make no mistake, Essendon can still miss the finals despite sitting in seventh spot on the ladder with 11 wins and a horror percentage.

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If they lose to Fremantle then Collingwood in Round 23, their destiny is out of their hands.

Port Adelaide needs only to beat North Melbourne and Fremantle (at Adelaide Oval) and Adelaide one of West Coast, Collingwood (Adelaide Oval) or the Bulldogs and Essendon are out.

The Dogs can leapfrog them too if they register two wins over GWS and Adelaide after last night’s percentage change for both sides.

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Get into the finals and win one for the first time since 2004 and it sets up everything Essendon has been trying to build.

It shores up John Worsfold’s future amid feverish speculation about his tenure, it justifies the picks given away for Jake Stringer, Dylan Shiel, Devon Smith and Adam Saad, it underpins the club’s financial successes since the ASADA furore.

Fail to make finals yet again, and everything is up for grabs.

What happens to Worsfold, whose calm demeanour is seen as a positive in their wins but is turned against him as he seems almost comatose and without inspiration in losses?

Essendon has been footy’s most mediocre club in the past 15 years from an on-field perspective, the Bombers’ best ladder position after Round 23 a miserable seventh across that span.

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Essendon had no answers against the rampaging Bulldogs. Picture: Michael Klein

Remove Gold Coast from that argument given the club is only nine years old, and if we have to throw the Suns into an argument anyway it shows how far the Dons have fallen.

Essendon has played four losing finals since 2004, with the margins of defeat 65 points (against Sydney in 2017), 12 points (against North Melbourne in 2014), 62 points (against Carlton in 2011) and 96 points (against Adelaide in 2009).

It’s a horror show.

The injuries are an excuse for Essendon to get beaten by a white-hot Bulldogs on Saturday night, but not for them to concede 21 straight goals.

On this year’s evidence, Essendon’s players will justifiably face questions they are mentally weak.

After losses to Sydney and St Kilda to start the John Worsfold said the players had failed to grasp how hard they needed to try to win games of football.

John Worsfold will come under fierce scrutiny if Essendon misses the finals.

Last night as he apologised to fans captain Dyson Heppell admitted the 22 picked had failed to come to play.

The only rejoinder to those accusations is to beat Fremantle and Collingwood, win a final and prove the critics wrong.

What they say in the middle of the firestorm in coming days is irrelevant, but on Saturday night will be all about their actions in response to a loss Matthew Lloyd dubbed one of the worst in Essendon’s 120-year history.