AFL 2022: Mick McGuane’s eight-point plan to turn around Essendon’s fortunes
Essendon’s midfield is floundering and the Bombers have a former Brisbane engine-room guru coaching forwards, so, Mick McGuane asks, is Blake Caracella still the answer?
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Ruthless teams win premierships. Nice teams finish last.
What does one of Melbourne’s biggest clubs — Essendon — stand for right now?
They are flaky because of their contest work, which urgently needs addressing.
They are unpredictable because their midfielders prefer to go-sideways rather than having a go-forward mentality, which is a nightmare for their forwards.
And they are selfish because too many players don’t conform to their roles and there is a reluctance to buy into pressure, tackling and team defence.
Right now, Essendon is a complete mess and if coach Ben Rutten does not right the ship in the final eight weeks he will be under significant pressure to keep his job.
Here are eight things that need to be addressed if this proud club is to turn its fortunes around.
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1. INVEST IN PRESSURE AND TACKLING
We keep hearing from Rutten that the Bombers’ attack comes on the back of strong defensive actions.
Stop the lip-service, Ben, and start to challenge your players and get them to do what you say.
Essendon supporters are sick of hearing the same things week after week without seeing any of them in action on the field.
The Bombers are ranked 18th in the competition for pressure applied and have laid the fewest tackles of any side with 677.
This is not a talent issue — it is all about intent.
Adelaide — which has only two more wins — has laid almost 200 more tackles at 872.
Consider the tackle numbers in the Crows midfield – Rory Laird has laid 88, Sam Berry 81 and Ben Keays 68.
At Essendon, Jye Caldwell leads the tackle count with 57, Dylan Shiel has 56 and then you have to go down to Zach Merrett at 41 and Darcy Parish with only 34.
Why is it that Parish has only laid that many, when Richmond ruckman Toby Nankervis has 61 to his name?
It’s embarrassing that a ruckman has nearly doubled a midfielders tackling output.
Who at Essendon wants to be Gold Coast’s midfield version of Matt Rowell, who has laid a staggering 103 tackles?
But this is not just a midfield issue, either.
Adelaide’s pressure forward Ned McHenry has laid 42 tackles and Gold Coast’s Nick Holman an incredible 66, while the Bombers’ pressure forward Matt Guelfi has laid only 24.
When your best players are reluctant to buy in and tackle, you have a serious problem.
2. CHANGE THE COACHING SET UP
Essendon recruited assistant coach Dale Tapping at the end of last year, who had a fantastic association with the Brisbane Lions over the previous five seasons.
At the Lions, he was the midfield coach and challenged a group that included Lachie Neale, Dayne Zorko, Jarryd Lyons, Hugh McCluggage and Jarrod Berry to become better and more consistent around contested situations.
Maybe it’s time for current Essendon midfield coach Blake Caracella to swallow his pride and hand over the reins to Tapping. It might be the tonic the midfield group needs because in its current state it is floundering.
Tapping, who was with Collingwood before his time at Brisbane, has been the forwards coach at Essendon this year and has done a fantastic job with Peter Wright in particular.
But Essendon’s issue right now is at the coalface with their contest and stoppage work. They need to get better productivity from inside the contest to outside.
You have to question whether the midfield group is being coached strongly enough and being held to account by Caracella.
Every game starts and stops in the midfield and Tapping has shown he is capable of lifting the standards in this area if given the chance.
3. FIX TEAM DEFENCE
If you want to see just how badly Essendon is breaking down defensively, pull up the replay of last week’s loss to West Coast and scroll through to when there is 14:20 left on the clock in the first quarter.
Bombers forward Peter Wright has just booted a behind and Elliot Yeo kicks the ball back in to play where it is marked by Andrew Gaff in the back pocket.
Gaff kicks back to Yeo, who is still deep in defence.
In the top left of the screen, Nick Bryan finds himself near Jamie Cripps, while Mason Redman is with West Coast relief ruckman Callum Jamieson just to the right.
Redman points to Bryan and tells him to take Cripps — who is normally Redman’s man — while he picks up Bryan’s opponent in Jamieson.
Yeo kicks long to a contest on the wing and Jayden Laverde is forced to peel off his opponent Jack Darling because Redman has not kept up with Jamieson who is the target.
The ball spills behind the marking contest to Laverde’s man Darling, who handballs to Liam Ryan in space.
Bryan decides to leave Cripps spare in the corridor to push up on Ryan but doesn’t impact the contest.
He never was so why leave an opponent in such an attacking position — it was dumb to say the least.
Ryan chips the ball over the top of Bryan to a vacant Cripps, who chips to a leading Josh Kennedy inside 50.
In 16 seconds, the Eagles went from the back pocket to a mark inside-50 and Kennedy went on to kick their first goal.
This was a slow-play situation where Essendon had time to get organised and due to poor defensive decisions they get scored against. In close margin games these inexcusable decisions matter.
It is moments like these that are clearly hurting a team which is conceding 94.8 points a game — the fourth-most in the competition.
4. STOP GIFTING GAMES IN THE MIDFIELD
Essendon’s stoppage work is out of whack.
The Bombers are too much of an outside team and don’t have enough inside grunt, which might require some personnel changes to the midfield group.
Essendon needs to get serious and stop gifting midfield time to Merrett and Parish, who are high possession winners but are not winning enough contested ball.
Merrett rates below average for contested possessions, with a contested possession rate of just 27.5 per cent of his overall possession numbers.
It is time to start giving more midfield time to the likes of Archie Perkins, Ben Hobbs and Jye Caldwell, which might prick the pride of those who are accustomed to going to the centre square and playing their way.
Merrett is regularly used as a defensive sweeper, but too often chooses to corral an opponent when he could instead be in their face and either win a hard ball or tackle them.
Zach, stop corralling or retreating, it’s time to squeeze hard up against an opponent with the ball and start becoming the tackling machine your team needs.
It is little point playing a defensive midfielder if they do not have an ingrained defensive mindset.
If Merrett wants to be a future captain as we’re led to believe, he has to start leading from the front rather than playing the cheap possession game he is.
Maybe he is coached that way, but if he is the messaging must change.
If Essendon really does put value on contest work, Merrett needs to make way until he improves in that area and Tom Cutler should never play again.
Cutler is a nice outside player, but his contested possession rate is even lower than Merrett’s at 25.2 per cent and in his nine games he has laid eight tackles.
That’s an acceptance of mediocrity.
5. CHANGE THE GAME PLAN – IMMEDIATELY
The Bombers like to roll up a half-forward to saturate the stoppages between the arcs with players like Will Snelling and Kyle Langford now that they are back.
In their absence it was Caldwell and Hobbs.
It is a strategy that has worked well for Richmond over the years, but it is unsuitable and unsustainable at the Bombers.
What is does it gives the opposition a free defender and more often than not Essendon dump kicks forward when it does win the clearance to a 5 v 6 situation.
The Bombers are heavily reliant on Jake Stringer, Peter Wright or Harrison Jones marking the footy.
If it comes to ground, those three players have got limited defensive attributes to keep the ball locked in, which allows the opposition to rebound with ease using their outnumber to advantage.
If Essendon doesn’t readjust against Sydney this week, expect Tom McCartin, Paddy McCartin, Dane Rampe and Jake Lloyd to be racking up season-high intercept possession numbers.
The Bombers will get monstered and won’t score.
If there was ever a week to abandon their usual game style and hold six forwards at home, it is this week. Equalising the numbers in their front third of the ground is imperative.
6. GET THE FRONT HALF MIX RIGHT
The loss of Anthony McDonald-Tipungwuti in attack this year has been stark and the Bombers need to find another pressure forward to replace him.
Guelfi is assuming that role and going a good job but he needs help.
Could wingman Sam Durham be the answer?
He is competitive and loves the physicality.
Maybe running defender Nick Hind could be flipped forward at times to play as a pressure forward, like he did at St Kilda.
Or could Darcy Parish be sent forward and taught the importance of frontline defensive pressure?
Essendon needs to try something in this area, because it ranks 14th for points from forward half intercepts, which is a key component of the modern game.
Devon Smith has a year to run on his contract, but the Bombers should put him up as trade bait if there are any buyers.
If there aren’t and he doesn’t want to buy in and conform to what his role is, don’t play him again.
As much as Alec Waterman can be a goalkicker, he does not provide the defensive work rate and pressure to lock the footy in, either.
And what does Brayden Ham bring to the team at the moment?
Excluding his two games as a non-playing medical substitute, he has laid eight tackles in six games and hasn’t kicked a goal.
7. GET AGGRESSIVE AT THE TRADE TABLE
The biggest hole on Essendon’s list is a key defender.
Brandon Zerk-Thatcher doesn’t appear to have come on as well as the Bombers hoped, Aaron Francis has always promised a lot but has delivered little, in fact, he has become a tease and I’m convinced their not sure where James Stewart plays his best footy or is he just not good enough.
The Bombers need to get aggressive and find someone to help their undersized defence and also help their future key defender, Zach Reid develop.
Could Jeremy McGovern be enticed out of West Coast with a three or four-year deal?
Alex Keath is out of contract at the Western Bulldogs and could be another target.
Essendon’s list management team needs to find a way to bring in a big-bodied key defender so that undersized pair Laverde and Jordan Ridley can go back to playing hybrid intercepting roles.
8. COMMISSION AN EXTERNAL REVIEW
Don’t get me wrong, I have great respect for Kevin Sheedy and Simon Madden.
But if you’re going to do a review of the football department, do it properly and keep club legends out of the picture.
You need to have an open-minded outside view from someone who does not have any emotional attachments to people at the club and can sit down and make a balanced assessment of what is wrong.
Adelaide brought in Hawthorn legend Jason Dunstall for a review and Carlton brought in former Fremantle champion Matthew Pavlich for its review.
If Essendon wants to get to the bottom of what is going wrong at the club and how to fix it, it needs to conduct a proper external review now.
The Bombers faithful need answers.
They have been very patient up until now but rest assured they are getting very restless the way the team is currently performing. It’s time for accountability and a ruthless approach to standards being met.
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