Tara Murray
Essendon hopes the tide is turning and a win is around the corner in the Victorian Football League.
The Bombers are winless after six rounds as they have struggled to put together a four quarter performance.
Development coach Cam Roberts said they were clearly not where they wanted to be, but there had been some signs of improvement over the course of the last month.
“We’re starting to put it together,” he said.“
“We’ve played our way for quarters or parts of quarters before we lost our way in games and they’ve got away from us.
“We have periods of games where we play a good brand of football. But in recent weeks we’ve had to play catch up football.”
Roberts said the match against Footscray was a case of that, when they conceded seven goals in the third quarter.
They would lose by 13 points.
With a young group, both VFL and AFL wise, Roberts said the key was to continue educating the group.
“This week we have been educating the group again,” he said.
“We would prefer them to be winning, but this is part of playing football. It’s education on what those key moments look like and how to counter that.
“Results aside, we want to play our brand of football for longer periods and the results will take care of themselves.”
Roberts said it was a couple of the leaders that were really leading the way this season for the side.
He said Sam Conforti played his best game of the season against the Bulldogs putting together a four quarter performance.
Captain Joe Atley, who is only 23, has been leading from the front and has been really good in the contest.
From an AFL perspective, the form of Tom Hird has got fans excited.
“Tom has worked really hard on his craft and reaping the rewards for it,” Roberts said.
“He has found a home as a high half forward and on occasions on the wing. He kicked a beautiful goal on the weekend and the week before he had five shots and should have had four goals.
“He’s still a really young player.”
Roberts said ruck Nick Bryan and defender Zach Reid, who had an AFL call up last week, were the two AFL-listed players who had been the standouts so far.
The Bombers play Hawthorn on Sunday.
Roberts said they would continue to work on playing their brand of football.
“It would be nice to generate a win,” he said.
“We want to try and settle the side a little bit. We’re a young squad who we’ll continue to educate and we will see more results with.
Meanwhile the Bombers VFLW side are set to face Darebin Falcons on Saturday.
The ladder leading Bombers have already secured a finals spot.
