The Look Ahead will be the staple pre-season content piece, setting a tone for all 18 teams. The plan is to use them as a scene setter for team trends and individuals. In other words, don’t expect predictions, expect topics to be introduced – from both a list build and on-field perspective.
Year 2 of the Brad Scott Era was kicked off with a familiar list build strategy for those who know. What it means in the short term is a much deeper list than the one that fell away as 2023 progressed.
Player contracts
The kerfuffle about Ben McKay’s heavily front-loaded contract was amusing; ‘can’t see the forest for the trees’ summarised most of that discourse.
Because of that, and surely similar gymnastics for Gresham and Duursma’s contracts, there surely remains plenty of flexibility for the Bombers to offer players whatever they think is reasonable.
The injury v availability conundrum will be a subplot for several out of contract this year and of course, there is the intangible of Contract Year Jake Stringer to keep in mind…
List demographics
Normally there’s a section here talking about young guys, old guys, standout topics, and everything in between.
For Essendon I’m going to skip it for now: there’s a properly in-depth discussion on part of this list demographic a little further down the page.
Create your own Essendon Depth Chart
Changes in personnel
In:
National Draft: Nate Caddy, Luamon Lual, Archie Roberts
From other clubs: Xavier Duursma, Todd Goldstein, Jade Gresham, Ben McKay
Rookie Draft: Vigo Visentini
Out: Massimo D’Ambrosio, Alastair Lord, Cian McBride, Anthony McDonald-Tipungwuti, Rhett Montgomerie, Anthony Munkara, Andrew Phillips, Will Snelling, James Stewart, Patrick Voss, Brandon Zerk-Thatcher
What is the next evolution of their style?
This isn’t a ‘premiership teams don’t play like Essendon last year!!1!11’ speech because that’s tiresome.
For the uninitiated, this is how I see Essendon’s on and off-ball style, using the Port Adelaide MCG game to illustrate.
The middle two quarters were arguably the best indicator of that style’s benefits. However it did fall away over the last six weeks of the season, exposing areas where it needed to improve.
The query is whether Essendon’s base approach stays the same and they look to build up, or whether they change a couple of foundational pieces to their offence and defence. Either way would be understandable, but we won’t get a proper indicator of their decision until the first game against proper opposition.
What is the ceiling of their current ‘prime years’ players?
Last year I was welcomed on the Don The Stat podcast – a North Melbourne person on an Essendon podcast, no less – and talked about how the concept of building a list from the middle – as opposed to the ‘traditional’ way provides so many discussion points.
In lieu of going through them all and penning a dissertation, the one that stands out most to me is figuring out what the ‘prime years’ players are capable of.
For the purpose of this point, I’m talking about all 13 players between their age 26 to 28 years: Draper, McGrath, Ridley, Setterfield, Gresham, Guelfi, McKay, Parish, Redman, Weideman, Langford, Laverde, and Wright.
If those players are capable of maintaining an upper-mid table standard, it’s okay to continue building from the middle. Why? Because it only takes a handful of moves to properly replenish the list without having to start again. Hit on a handful of draft picks – admittedly a higher degree of difficulty without initial access to the top end – and bring in A-grade talent from elsewhere; suddenly there’s real excitement across all areas of the list.
But if those players, as a collective, are stodgy and treading water at best, it’s locking Essendon in for years of 10-to-13-win seasons with little upside. For the NBA aficionados among us, I’m visualising Atlanta Hawks basketball in the late 2000s and early 2010s. Decent, definitely never a bad side, but also never, ever a chance of reaching championship contender status unless half a dozen teams were felled by congenital heart defects moments before they entered the court.
Needless to say, the former appears to be Essendon’s goal rather than the latter. This year will provide an insight for how it’ll fare.
What is success for Essendon in 2024?
Winning a final.
Sorry, sorry, I couldn’t resist.
In all seriousness, for me it’s whether we see the benefits of the previous section. Scratching into September and winning a final by hook or by crook would literally provide endless social fodder at the team unfortunate enough to be on the other end.
If the process to get there is sound, then that’s great. But if it’s another 11-win season with stronger underlying numbers and a couple more wins against quality, in-form opposition, that’s arguably a much better indicator of progression.