The resilience of the Essendon players will be further tested this week as it prepares to travel to Queensland to take on the Gold Coast.

The Bombers are coming off their biggest defeat of the year and after a season filled with injuries to key players, heavy losses and continued off-field scrutiny, Coach James Hird can sense the ability of his players to keep fighting is waning.

“The first quarter (against Adelaide) we played pretty well, we were in the game, a couple of costly turnovers, we didn’t kick straight and I think the resilience of the playing group is probably really low at the moment,” he said. 

“The ability to work through periods of the game and fight your way through the game when things aren’t going well is probably fairly weak at the moment. 

“When things start to fall apart on the ground it’s not necessarily the message, it’s the resilience to go and fight and fight your way through things when they don’t work.” 

The Bombers kicked four goals after quarter time as the Crows took control in front of a crowd of 25,914. 

“When you play in a game like that and you make mistakes or you don’t perform in front of that many people or you let down your teammates and you let down your supporters, it hurts, it really, really hurts,” Hird said. 

“That might not matter to a lot of people but when you go in that change room the players are really hurting because they know they’ve let themselves down, their supporters down.” 

With Essendon’s VFL side recording a big win over Frankston; Hird will have options to consider when he and the match committee select the side to take on the Suns. 

“We’ll review it Monday, we’ll review it hard, we’ll work out what we could do better,” he said. 

“We’ll drop players, we’ll pick new players.  Players won’t be on the list next year who probably played in that game – not just based on that performance – but they’re people and we care for them.” 

After experiencing another week of intense scrutiny, as sensitive information the players were assured would remain confidential was aired publically, Hird called on the football world to give the players the clear air they need to perform. 

“Why should they lose passion because they were victims?” Hird said. 

“All I ask is that the industry allows them to go on and play and while there is a story every second day being written – and I understand people have their jobs – that’s really not fair on our players.”