Essendon coach John Worsfold has lamented his side’s performance in its 21-point loss to the Western Bulldogs on Sunday.

Speaking on BomberTV’s weekly exclusive members video ‘From the Coach’, Worsfold frankly described the game as “really disappointing”.

“We really just didn’t put any pressure on the Bulldogs once the ball was away from the contest,” Worsfold said post-game.

“The balls they won in space – they stayed in space, were able to easily find uncontested players and transition the ball down the ground, which really messed up everything we were trying to do.

“Some of that came from just really poor decision-making and poor turnovers on our behalf, but we were miles off playing the brand of footy that we’re aiming to play and we’re expecting from each other.”

Worsfold said while addressing the Bombers’ issues from the loss is important, his focus will be to ensure the team knows how to achieve his intended brand of football.

“So we’ll now sit down and really strongly assess why we were like that tonight, but stay focused on the footy that we want to play.

“That’s what we’ll keep building towards and (we will) challenge the players to understand why we let ourselves down tonight (and) where we are aiming to improve.”

Defensive performance coach Mark Harvey said a big reason for the ease of the Dogs’ attacks was Essendon’s poor disposal in the back half.

“In our back 50 we had some interesting disposals in the first quarter, we couldn’t get it out of there through our kick-outs,” Harvey said.

“Even our general field kicking was an issue on the way out, which created more opportunities for the Bulldogs.”

Harvey said the Bombers weren’t providing enough drive out of defence and would need to overcome its habit of slow starts this season.

“We need to work on some of our ball movement in and around our back half and make sure we give ourselves more options moving forward and hopefully lift our inside-50 rate, which has been at 43 and 44 in the past two weeks.

“Unfortunately we are under pressure and we’re trying to come from behind on the scoreboard, it’s not helping circumstances.

“The reality is we just need to get some confidence in the first quarter particularly and try to reverse that trend.”

Midfield performance coach Hayden Skipworth said his players also failed to provide the team’s forwards the best opportunities to kick a winning score.

“Although the clearances and tackles were even for the night, I thought they outworked us from contest to contest,” Skipworth said.

“Once they got the ball in their hands we really couldn’t get it back off them and when we got the ball through the mid arc we really didn’t hit up our forwards or kick to the forwards’ advantage.”

Forward performance coach Paul Corrigan admitted Essendon didn’t do enough to lock the ball inside-50 when it did eventually come inside, but was able to find some positives from the match.

“We looked at our entries inside 50 and the Bulldogs got us in that, we only had 44 entries for the night and (that is) not enough looks on goal,” Corrigan said.

“I thought our pressure up forward was inconsistent at times tonight. The Bulldogs were able to get through us a little too easily and we weren’t able to retain the ball in our front half for long enough periods.

“Having Raz (Fantasia) back tonight was really good, I thought he performed really well for (his) first game back. I thought Joey (Daniher) worked himself into the game really well and he took four contested marks tonight.

“I thought Jimmy Stewart did a really good job on keeping Easton Wood engaged and not allowing him to come off and intercept.”

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