Review

Expectations.

The bye arrived at a good time for Essendon after a disappointing first half of 2026, hopefully providing an opportunity for the coaching staff, the players and everyone associated with the football club to reset before what will no doubt be a defining period for its future.

What I’ll be looking for in the back half of the season is whether the Bombers can begin consistently meeting a series of realistic benchmarks across different facets of the modern game.

Some will be measured by quarter, others across the full game, with the standards based either on areas Essendon fell short in earlier meetings this season or what opposition sides have consistently been able to achieve against that week’s opponent.

This is what I had set for the return bout against North Melbourne, based primarily on the Round 3 clash, as well as what both sides had shown since that late March encounter.

Limit North Melbourne’s clearance damage.

In Round 3, North Melbourne dominated restarts, finishing +10 at total clearances, with +8 of those coming around the ground.

Essendon’s biggest issue was its inability to stop North Melbourne’s midfield from getting the ball out once they won first possession.

The Kangaroos converted 96.6% of their first possessions into clearances, comfortably their best rate of the season and well above their average of three in every four.

That meant the challenge this week wasn’t necessarily to win clearances outright, but to prevent North Melbourne from turning them into territory and, ultimately, onto the scoreboard.

This time the issue was different. Rather than efficiency, it was weight of numbers.

Even though Essendon held North Melbourne below a 69% clearance conversion rate, Luke Davies-Uniacke early, and later Harry Sheezel, repeatedly won first possession in congestion, forcing Essendon to react and win the ball back.

Back in Round 3, Essendon was able to defend post clearance, restricting North Melbourne to just six shots from 31 clearances, at the time their second lowest return of the season.

Once again, the Bombers stood up in this phase, holding the Kangaroos to just three points from this score source, the equal least Essendon has conceded in the past nine years.

By three-quarter time, despite trailing clearances by six, Essendon had still outscored North Melbourne by 11 points from stoppage chains.

Make it a contest.

In the earlier clash, North Melbourne were too strong in both parts of the contested game, finishing +6 pre-clearance and +5 post, but it was once the ball got outside of contest that was Essendon’s biggest problem, as it has been for years, let’s be honest.

On that occasion, North Melbourne were only required to win 29.4% of their possessions the hard way, almost 5% below their season average, which was already the third-lowest in the competition.

This week Essendon went to a new low, only forcing their opponent into winning 23.2% of their possessions the hard way, with 321 uncontested possessions the most recorded by any team this year. The game effectively became keepings off, as Essendon also mirrored that profile with just 27% contested.

In the critical third quarter, Essendon’s midfield was meek in the centre square, and not much better can be said for the players behind.

The Bombers would only win 16 contested possessions in this 20 minutes, their lowest return in any quarter since the start of 2025, and when they did manage to intercept, they did their teammates ahead of the ball no favours by playing indirect, giving them very few opportunities to impact.

By game’s end, Essendon had only four one-on-one contests in the front half, their second lowest of the season behind the Carlton game. Not nearly enough to expose a North Melbourne defence that loses almost one in every three one-on-one contests.

Not all blame must fall on the back half though, as forwards down the ground failed to reliably present as a viable option, with their midfield teammates providing no link between the two halves.

Bring the tackling heat.

I wrote during the week that Essendon was 17th for opposition possessions per tackle by the mid-season bye, improving marginally from 18th at Round 8, with the hope that something was said and done over this break and that it would be shown first up, but as we saw, nothing changed.

The Bombers’ season average rate of 7.75 was almost double at quarter time, and after improving in the second to 7.93, it blew out after the main change to 17.71, including the last quarter where they applied just five tackles, while North Melbourne racked up 39 uncontested marks and 106 possessions.

In Round 3, 14 players would only lay at most two tackles for the game, and this week it was even worse with 19. Of the four who did, Sam Durham and Will Setterfield’s six, and Zach Merrett and Harry Jones’ three each would make up over 51% of Essendon’s effective tackles. With the Bombers total of 35 their 3rd equal lowest since 2013.

Finally, for probably the second time that I can remember in the last four years, poor tackle numbers came up in the coaches post-match presser. If Dean Solomon is to set a simple requirement for this week’s training and then game day, a quarter-by-quarter rate of the AFL average of 14 needs to be the starting point.

Any improvement in defending transition will be welcome.

It may be hard to believe, but North Melbourne is quite efficient in rebounding from its defensive 50, with 27.3% of those possession chains making it into their front third, just above the AFL average heading into this clash. In Round 3, Essendon was able to hold them to almost one in every five, but how things have changed in the 11 games since then.

Over 42% of the Roos’ defensive 50 chains went unbroken through the middle of the ground and inside 50, their best rate in over 10 years (unbelievably it’s only Essendon’s second worst rate this year behind Hawthorn in Round 1), with a 53% success rate up until three-quarter time.

On their way forward, it was a mixture of uncontested marks together with handball receives that absolutely opened up Essendon all over the ground.

In their earlier meeting, Essendon held North Melbourne to 130 handball receives, almost identical to the Kangaroos’ season average. This time it was 182, exposing the Bombers’ lack of pressure and the ease of unpressured ball movement.

Hold up in the back third.

Heading into this game, North Melbourne were the second most efficient team in finding a marking option inside 50, while at the other end of the scale Essendon were the second worst team for restricting per entry.

With the knowledge and experience from Round 3, where North Melbourne took 20 marks from only 49 inside 50s, surely an achievable target would be to get closer to the AFL average of 22.7%, but what happens further up the ground plays a big part.

With handball receives, as well as uncontested marks in the back two thirds of the ground, the Kangaroos were able to pinpoint passes in their front third over 37% of the time, including six marks in the first quarter, and nine in the third.

Fremantle was the number one ranked team at retaining possession on an inside 50, sitting at 52.8% after Round 15, with North Melbourne just above the AFL average at 47.5%. This week they were six percent better than the Dockers, with 58.8% Essendon’s 4th worst result in any game this year. With the ball moving too easily between the arcs, what hope did the defenders have.

18 of the Roos’ scores came from behind centre, including 13 of their first 20 scores from turnovers in Essendon’s front half.

From a paltry 92 possession chains, almost 20 less than the AFL average, North Melbourne were able to turn 31.5% of them into scores, their best conversion rate in the last 10 years (unfortunately, it’s Essendon’s third worst just this year: 38.5% against Hawthorn and 36.3% against Collingwood).

Where to now?

It would’ve been expected that a two-week break would refresh the players and allow the coaching staff, who was no doubt under siege and under-resourced at the moment, time to work on some basics such as tackling, which would have had clear flow-on effects in performance on both defence and attack. Unfortunately, nothing changed — let’s be honest, it got worse.

The same fundamentals must be on the white board again this week, with some structural changes to help.

More representation of targets ahead of the ball would provide a more reliable outlet for defenders with ball in hand.

At the moment, too much is being expected of them, not only to hold up in defence when the ball is coming at them too easily, but also to intercept and then rebound, starting attacking chains with very little support between the arcs from the midfield brigade.

The Zach Merrett experiment seemed a good one on paper, and one I have agreed upon in the past, but in those situations it only works with a dominant midfield, or even one that’s breaking even, with players who are able to impact and become links in chains between the defenders and the forwards. Right now, that piece is missing, and so Merrett’s shift back on-ball is needed.

The key position stocks in the front half have taken a hit, with both Peter Wright and Archer May sorely missed. To change the over-possessing when Essendon has the footy, Ben McKay and Nate Caddy need more beside them who can stand up and stand tall as outlet options down the line.

Embrace the contest more, force the opposition to win more of the ball in dispute, and make the game more chaotic, something that benefits this Essendon list more than the control option.

If Solomon is going to stand by his words of “gritty not pretty”, he must put his stamp on it immediately.

Go Bombers!