Despite last week’s frustrating season-opening defeat to Fremantle, Essendon are quickly regrouping for their round two trip to Perth.

The Bombers’ 43-point loss at Windy Hill was a tale of two halves, with the home side struggling to rebound from the loss of two rotations and a pair of key players in Bonnie Toogood and Amber Clarke after a nasty collision.

Saturday’s follow-up fixture against West Coast provides a big challenge for the Dons, who are willing to take it on as they ride the wave of a short season.

“The classic response is you’ve got to move on,” club debutant Maddi Gay said last week.

“We do have a short season so (we’ll be) moving on quickly, seeing what we need to improve from this week.  Watching West Coast beat the Tigers, they’re a strong outfit so we’ll definitely put our magnets together and see what we can do.

“You’ve got to bring the energy past that, we’ll work on that this week as well.”

Sentiment was similar for Senior Coach Natalie Wood, who’s looking to rally the troops for another test to try and open their account this season.

Reflecting on the weekend’s defeat however, Wood was impressed by the signs from youngsters such as Amy Gaylor and Emily Gough, who didn’t look out of place at the level and showed promising signs in adverse circumstances.

“(The loss put a) big ask on some kids, but what we learn from that is we have some really resilient players and young people coming in,” Wood said.

“Not only resilient but really capable. In their first game in tough conditions, we saw some great skills shine.

“It’s quite disappointing (the defeat) but we spoke about the need to sort of feel that but move through it really quickly.

“(Perth is) going to be a big trip for us and we need to make sure we refocus and look at how we’re going to tackle this week, how we’re going to work to put our best foot forward.”