November 13th

A welcome sight.

The first week of pre-season is behind us, and with just over 18 weeks remaining, I am encouraged by what I have seen so far from the coaches and confident they will make the most of this time to develop the next generation of Bombers and set the standards that will be expected of them.

I’ll get into this further later on, but there is no place to hide for the players, nothing missed by the coaches and no hesitation in explaining what went wrong and how it needs to be fixed.

Who’s here.

Unlike Wednesday, when the majority of players on the track were in their first to fourth years, today’s group was much more like Monday’s, with only Jye Caldwell not sighted. (He trained fully two days ago.)

Peter Wright came out and completed most of his run-throughs alone before finishing up early, while Archie Roberts and Nic Martin started out as running mates before eventually continuing their agility training. They were joined at times by Sam Durham, Harrison Jones and Kyle Langford, although those three took part in most of what was asked of the squad, with Jones joining the main group for the first time this pre-season.

Koby Bewick and Mustafa Darwish completed every drill, having participated in around 70% of them earlier in the week.

Recently delisted Kayle Gerreyn had the whole main oval to himself before the 9.30am start, running lap after lap and taking every opportunity to get ahead of the train-on opportunity he has been given, which begins in a few weeks.

More of this please.

After some warm-up running that included interval sprinting, the footballs came out and introduced the main theme of what would be the 140-minute session: defending.

While there were some breaks from the defensive focus, with handball drills building on what I explained from Monday and Wednesday regarding timing and players holding their positions within the painted lanes, almost everything else was centred around work without the footy.

Essendon’s handball game has been a mess for the last three years, so it’s no surprise to see attention being given to it, particularly after Mark McVeigh’s comments when he was first appointed about wanting to play with more speed.

In the past, Essendon has struggled to take the ball from inside to out by hand because teammates were too close and still in congestion, or were flat-footed with poor timing. Both made it much easier for the opposition to defend the perimeter.

By holding players outside and in line with the ball carrier, helped by the black painted reference lines I wrote about on Wednesday, there was much more fluidity to the ‘get and give’, with players knowing where their teammates would be.

Repetition.

Once again, re-entries off wide rebounds were part of track work, with changing angles a clear instruction to the kicker. The offside winger was also encouraged to keep pushing deep inside 50 to provide another marking option, rather than relying solely on the forward leading at the ball.

Before refreshing the work with the footy from earlier in the week, the first drill tested the players' ability to connect as a team within a team.

Speak up!

Three players were placed inside a rectangle, with six on the outside kicking the ball around and forcing those in the middle to defend. More importantly, the three inside needed to communicate with each other about who should go where to close the space, forcing the kicker, at the very least, to move the ball in a different direction than intended.

With coaches spread around the groups, the clear message was to talk, talk, talk, all in the interest of defending large areas more efficiently.

With that out of the way, the first of what I expect will be many simulations over the next four months had the coaches teaching the players how to defend turnovers, both off fast and slow play.

This is where Essendon needs the most improvement through education, work and experience, and it was obvious the coaches weren’t going to stand for anything below standard.

With only two-thirds of the ground used lengthwise, the forwards would sit under the high ball coming at them ‘skinny’ (from the same direction the ball originally came from) inside 50, while their teammates further down the ground got into position to help prevent rebounds coming out too easily.

Once again, shape was the theme, along with communication, with instructions to reference where you were and where your opponent was coming loud from the sidelines. Get this wrong, and the players knew about it.

McVeigh has waited a long time for this opportunity, and he isn’t going to let this group waste it.

When the forwards lost their set up in the front half, ‘Spike’ was immediately onto their line coach Michael Hurley and development coach Gary Rohan, who has been doing plenty of work with the small forwards, making sure his point was understood and what was missing was addressed.

The words ‘uncontested marks’ bring back nightmares for Essendon supporters, and seeing players retreat once the first mark was taken off rebound, rather than closing the space by coming forward, infuriated McVeigh instantly. Without hesitation, he stopped the drill, brought in the players responsible and made sure they understood that he would not accept any of it. And nor should he, or any Essendon supporter.

I have heard and read that this Essendon group desperately wants to be taught, is keen to learn and is up for the challenge ahead. Well, after this week, they better be.

Go Bombers!

Psst, Essendon’s new number 7?

As always, a big thank you to track watcher and The Bombers Blog supporter Charlie, who once again provided photos. For more action from today, head to https://x.com/charliedons?s=11&t=L4mpm7shJJYGHL-jgpWWBw

Another big thank you to The Bombers Blog supporter Rick Edwards for providing more pictures. For video highlights, another detailed report on today’s session and his 2026 draft analysis ahead of next week’s draft, search for Rick Edwards on Patreon.