Essendon’s list strategy is clear. Can they execute it?

Essendon’s post-season recruitment strategy is clear. The Bombers are addressing their most blatant needs and have targeted free agency, rather than just trades, in the knowledge that they cannot afford to trade their first pick in the upcoming draft.

So, North’s Ben McKay has arrived on a hefty six-year deal, Jade Gresham will very likely follow as another free agent signing from St Kilda, and Todd Goldstein, 35, is reuniting with Brad Scott – who was McKay’s first AFL coach – to provide quality back-up over the short term in Essendon’s two-ruck set-up.

Ben McKay has headed from North Melbourne to Essendon.Credit: AFL Photos

Unless there is a surprise raid – and it cannot be ruled out in Adrian Dodoro’s last hurrah as list boss – the only acquisition that will require Essendon to give up draft capital/players will be for Port Adelaide’s Xavier Duursma, who is slated to play a mixture of midfield and wing for the Bombers.

Having spoken to the Bombers, they’re adamant they will not part with pick No.9 in the draft, for either Gresham or Duursma, and that if the Saints match the Gresham free agency offer – as is their right – then he won’t be an Essendon player.

Jade Gresham.Credit: AFL Photos

The Gresham offer will not be in the same league as the McKay contract, which was north of $800,000 and thus earned the Roos the outrageous return of pick No.3 in the national draft for a player who has played 71 games in eight seasons, and is not in the same performance postcode of contemporaries Jacob Weitering or Harris Andrews.

But key position defenders who can actually play on Tom Hawkins and Tom Lynch are rarer than AFL apologies. The auction for McKay’s services between Essendon, Hawthorn and Sydney has delivered North more draft help than the special assistance that the AFL announced in grand final week. North’s complaints about Gold Coast’s freebies should cease forthwith.

Essendon’s list strategy is sound, but its success will hinge on execution. The Dons cannot continue to ask Jayden Laverde to play on Hawkins and other monsters, and they cannot throw Zach Reid to the wolves as soon as his body allows him to play seniors regularly.

They don’t have a clever high-half-forward of Gresham’s type, either, and Duursma, if fit, would certainly add muscle and run to a midfield in which the best senior players, Zach Merrett and Darcy Parish, aren’t physically powerful. Duursma has not been happy at Port and wants to spend more time in the centre square.

Essendon have had a raft of top-10 picks since 2020, when they lost Joe Daniher and Adam Saad due to internal dysfunction and were forced to go backwards. If the jury remains out on some of those first round selections since 2020 – Reid and Nik Cox having been grounded for much of their first three seasons – the Bombers have not yet reached the stage where they can give up a top-10 pick for a trade, unless it’s for an A-plus player in the right age bracket.

And there isn’t one of those in sight during this trade period, given that Melbourne’s dangling of Clayton Oliver amounted to “Clayton’s” trade talks – the trade talks you have when you’re not having trade talks.

McKay isn’t super, but he’s big enough to actually play the key back role, while Gresham, too, has more class than the current stocks of small forwards/mids in red and black. They should strengthen the Dons in those areas of relative weakness.

But they, and Duursma, won’t be sufficient to make Essendon great again, assuming the Port trade goes through and the Saints allow Gresham to leave as a free agent.

The Dons’ underlying issue remains that they don’t have enough absolute elite performers. Zach Merrett’s fourth best and fairest award underscored the A-plus player deficit – Merrett, while elite, isn’t in the company of Tim Watson and Simon Madden, whose Crichton Medal record he has already matched and will probably surpass.

Day two trade news:

• Restricted free agent Ben McKay landed at Essendon after North Melbourne refused to match the Bombers offer to him.
• James Harmes moved from Melbourne to the Western Bulldogs.
• Sydney’s initial offer for Brodie Grundy did not meet Melbourne’s satisfaction.

The trade for Duursma should be rendered easier by the fact that Brandon Zerk-Thatcher is heading to Port and a swap of some kind – potentially involving a pick that isn’t No.9 – shouldn’t be too challenging for those clubs if they’re both reasonable.

One upside, though, of that lack of super elite players (as distinct from Carlton or Melbourne’s top six stars) is that the Bombers have built a formidable war chest in salary cap terms. While they will spend more than $2 million on the four recruits if all land at the Hangar, they will retain plenty of space and scope for future growth and purchases.

These acquisitions will address only positional holes. They will not, by themselves, make up the class gap. For that, the Bombers will need to rely on the draft of 2023 and probably 2024 – and to pray that Archie Perkins, Cox, Ben Hobbs, Reid, Elijah Tsatas and others, make the great leap forward.

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