Lions vs Bombers Preview

Up against it.

Eleven games into their 2025 campaign, Essendon now packs their bags and heads north to face the Lions in their den, the Gabba.

It’s a massive challenge for a side that’s been hit hard by injuries in recent weeks, forced to turn to reinforcements, some still learning the pace and demands of AFL level, others trying to find their feet within the system and build chemistry on the fly. With constant changes across the ground, continuity will be difficult to establish, and the system’s reliance on connection and structure will be tested.

With so much change and uncertainty, this week's preview will take a different approach, focusing more on realistic expectations and the key areas to watch closely rather than the broader process. Given the circumstances, I expect this will remain the case for the next few games as the team works to find some stability.

But first, let's take a quick look back at last year's game.

Last time.

A quick look back at Round 24, not that there’s much to take out of this one, in my view.

I wasn’t a fan of how this game was played. I’m not a fan of basketball, and that’s exactly what this resembled. Once the ball got outside of the congestion at stoppage, it opened right up, with very little pressure applied by either side.

Out of the 815 total possessions in the game, more than 150 above last season’s AFL average, 560 were uncontested, making up over 68% of the total. That’s more than 6% above the league average, as both sides looked to control the ball by foot through uncontested chains. By half time, there had already been 116 uncontested marks combined, almost 32 above the 2024 average.

While the scoreboard shows a 20-point loss, the margin flatters Essendon. They trailed by 40 points at three quarter time with 16 fewer scoring shots, before kicking five straight in the last to round out a 2024 season that, once again, ended earlier than it should have.

The heart beat this week.

With only an injured El Hawli and possibly Parish being held back for one more week, the Essendon coaching group has a large complement of midfielders to choose from at selection this week, a fortunate position, given this area is Brisbane’s number one strength.

When it comes to winning contested possessions pre-clearance, the Lions rank 6th, behind three teams Essendon has struggled with in this metric this season: North Melbourne, Melbourne, and the Western Bulldogs. That strength extends to their work at ground level, where they rank 5th best in the competition, reinforcing just how well-equipped Brisbane are to win the ball at the source.

Brisbane come into this clash ranked number one for stoppage clearances around the ground this season, and 8th at centre bounce, making them the number two ranked team for total clearances overall, behind only the Bulldogs, who dismantled Essendon in this area two weeks ago.

Only Gold Coast and Adelaide convert first possessions at stoppages into effective clearances at a better rate than Brisbane. So not only will the Essendon mix of Durham, Caldwell, Setterfield, Merrett, and hopefully Martin again, after his first real look as a full-time midfielder last week, have a job ahead in winning the ball at the coalface of stoppages, but they’ll also have just as big a task in “stripping” Brisbane of possession to prevent them going from inside to out.

Obviously, the main injury disruption through the middle comes in the ruck, with Essendon missing both first and second-choice options in Bryan and Draper. Hopefully, Goldstein, in his sixth straight game filling in, can hold up against the likely combo of Fort, and Hipwood.

Including McInerney, this trio hasn’t been in great form since Round 7, with Brisbane ranked 18th for total hitouts and 17th for hitouts to advantage in that time. Essendon, by contrast, ranks 3rd and 4th in those same categories since then, thanks largely to Goldstein, with some relief contributions from Wright.

The midfield battle is always a measure of success for any team, and this season it’s been Essendon’s biggest barometer, both for setting up territory and as a source of scoring.

Scoreboard returns.

Only in Round 9 against Sydney has Essendon lost the scores-from-stoppages battle in a win, and even then, it was only by two points, after conceding 14 points from this source in the last quarter. But Brisbane, as expected, operate at another level, following up their clearance wins with genuine scoreboard impact. They turn an effective clearance into a shot at goal just over 24% of the time and rank 4th in the league for points from stoppages.

It’s an area of the ground where Essendon must hold their own, otherwise, the structural flow-on effects will make scoring even more difficult than it already looks, while also placing enormous pressure on a defensive unit that’s been the most affected by injury.

Up high.

This week’s priority will likely centre around holding up as a defensive unit first, and then trying to win the football back and rebound effectively second.

The three key defenders that started Round 1 together, Ridley, Reid and McKay, will all be missing, as well as first-in-line backup Hayes. That leaves second-in-line option Laverde as the main tall, with Redman required to play above his size (pending any mid-season draft additions). That’s obviously going to stretch things in terms of matchups.

Hipwood, Morris and Gardiner are the tall targets Essendon will need to deal with, and ruck Fort has also been spending large minutes forward since his return three games ago. As you can tell just from that lineup, it won’t just be about limiting the number of entries, but also about how the ball enters Brisbane’s forward third from further up the ground, which will go a long way to helping what’s likely to be an undersized backline.

But while the tall matchups may seem a mismatch, it’s Brisbane’s small to medium forwards that add the real complexity to their mix, and in some ways, present an even greater threat.

Down low.

Hipwood and Morris average 2.2 and 1.7 marks inside 50 respectively, but it’s the variety in Brisbane’s small-to-mid-tier options—Cameron with 1.9 marks per game, Ah Chee with 1.5, Bailey with 1, and Rayner just under 1—that poses more problems, because they can back up their aerial abilities at ground level as well.

If Essendon’s midfield can limit Brisbane’s entries from stoppage, or, at the very least, how clean they are, or even better, force them to start possession chains further from goal, it’ll give time for support to get behind the ball. And they’ll need it. Essendon comes into this game averaging the second-most one-on-ones in the defensive half, and they’re also losing the second-highest percentage of them.

Play your parts.

At the other end, scoring has been a problem for the Bombers, and the biggest culprit has been supply. Since Round 7, Essendon has averaged just over 44 inside 50s per game, the lowest in the competition, making quality over quantity more crucial than ever.

When they do get it in there, they’re actually finding a marking target more often than most would expect, just under 22% of entries, with Brisbane ranked just one spot ahead in 8th. But the issue is the quality of shots being taken is the lowest in the competition based on expected accuracy ( a metric that measures how many points a team should have scored from every shot at goal based on its location on the field)

Brisbane’s back third hasn’t been in great form coming into this game, allowing 23% of opposition entries to be marked inside their defensive 50, the equal sixth-worst rate over the last five games. While locating a marking target would certainly be ideal this week, what happens if one can’t be found will be just as important, because as the defenders will be relying on support from the midfielders, they’ll also be depending on the forwards to play a role.

Leading into this game, Essendon is the easiest team to transition against from defensive 50 to inside 50, and also the easiest to convert those transitions into scores. One of the major issues that’s plagued the Bombers in this space aligns directly with Brisbane’s default mode of ball movement.

This season, Essendon is allowing the most uncontested marks per game at 91.1, making it easier for opponents to move the ball freely and undo any territory gained far too easily. Unfortunately, this week they come up against the team that takes the most uncontested marks per game and the most per possession chain

Of the 94.7 uncontested marks Brisbane take per game, just under 82 on average are in their back two-thirds, forming the base of their method for moving the ball from behind centre into the front half.

It’s going to take a major shift in Essendon’s defensive method and mindset to have an impact here. But if they can assign a shut-down role to Brisbane’s number one rebounder from defensive 50, and preferred distributor by foot in Zorko, it forces someone with lesser skills to take over that role, or forces them into more contests, creating more opportunities to stop Brisbane further from goal.

Short sharp notes.

Brisbane and Essendon rank 2nd and 3rd respectively for possessions per opposition intercept, with only the Western Bulldogs ahead of them.

Essendon games average the fewest groundballs of any side, while Brisbane matches have the 8th most.

Essendon holds a 50% win rate from their last 10 visits to the Gabba against Brisbane.

In terms of turning a possession into a shot on goal, Essendon sits last in the league (18th), while Brisbane sits 8th.

Since the start of 2024, when Brisbane take 100 or more uncontested marks, they win 88% of the time. When they take fewer than 100, that win rate drops to just over 50%.

Since Round 7, Essendon ranks 18th for time in forward half (the amount of time a team spends with the ball in the forward half of the ground)

Last season, they were 7th, behind five eventual finalists.

Conclusion.

Injuries have certainly fast-tracked the development of several draftees into the senior lineup, players who, under different circumstances, might’ve had more time to find their feet at VFL level, but have instead been thrown straight into the demands of AFL football.

And while that acceleration will likely come at the cost of cohesion and short-term results, the long-term benefits are what Essendon has been building towards for some time.

That longer-term view makes this week’s challenge all the more challenging, an undermanned side going up against one of the most structured and experienced teams in the competition, on their home deck.

There may be no expectation to win.

But there is an expectation to learn.

Go Bombers!