Essendon coach James Hird said the defensive pressure around the ground must improve for the Bombers to regain the strong form they displayed in the first half of the season.

Hird said over the last few weeks the ball had simply not been kept in the Bombers forward half of the ground for long enough.

“The way we play our game, if we can’t keep the ball in our forward half then we cant win games of football,” Hird told 3AW on Saturday.

“We were very good at it in the first half of the year but the last four weeks we have been very poor at it.”

Hird said the Bombers would regroup and prepare for what is set to be a tough run home.

“Our players and our team as an entire group were very good over the first half of the season but we haven’t been that good over the last five or six weeks.”

“Our season is still alive, we are not throwing our season away.

“As a group we want to win and get back to playing good football.”

The Bombers have a tough run home with matches against Adelaide, North Melbourne, Carlton, Richmond and Collingwood still to come.

Capain Jobe Watson said the players must focus on recapturing the style of football they were playing for the first twelve weeks of the season and not the upcoming opponents.

“The opposition is irrelevant for us, it is about our ability to play a certain style and that is not happening at the moment,” Watson said after the match.

“Six or seven weeks ago we were probably in a much better position then we are now but in four or five weeks time you don’t know what is going to happen.

“We have a nine day break and we need to get back to playing the style of football that we want to be playing.”

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