The final Essendon squad is for tomorrow night is: Jay Neagle, Ricky Dyson, Scott Gumbleton, Jobe Watson, Angus Monfries, Leroy Jetta, Mark McVeigh, Andrew Lovett, Sam Lonergan, Courtenay Dempsey, Jay Nash, Matthew Lloyd, David Hille, Henry Slattery, Hayden Skipworth, John Williams, Cale Hooker, Patrick Ryder, Dustin Fletcher, Adam McPhee, Tyson Slattery, Jarrod Atkinson, Heath Hocking, Nathan Lovett-Murray, Bachar Houli, Tom Bellchambers
TOPIC OF THE WEEK
The relocation of Essendon’s game from Darwin to the Dome to become the Bushfire Appeal fundraiser would obviously be the big topic this week.
Speaking on behalf of the club, we see it as a major privilege to be a part of this AFL initiative and to assist the cause – to not only the victims but to the survivors who have to deal with this trauma.
Being part of this game is going to be enormous for this football club. The players and the staff are really looking forward to being involved and representing something that has been disastrous and very tragic. Our way to contribute is to represent Australian football the best way we can and it would be great to see a sell-out game as well as the Ch 7 telethon that is going to be on during the game. The other great part of this game will be the involvement of other AFL players who are going to be present at the game to ensure we raise as much as we can for the relief fund.
Given the cause, Essendon will certainly bring in bigger name players and I would guess that it would be a similar situation for the Bulldogs. Prior to the match we were toying with the idea of playing guys like Mark McVeigh, Scott Gumbleton, Matthew Lloyd and Jobe Watson but as soon as they knew they were playing for such a cause, they were straight on the phone wanting to be a part of it. It shows a bit, not only about their characters but about all the players putting their hands up for this week’s game.
The Western Bulldogs have a lot of exciting players in the midfield – players such as Lindsay Gilbee, Matthew Boyd and Daniel Cross are good players. I think the contest between them and our midfielders, including Jobe Watson and Mark McVeigh, will be good to see so early in the season.
From our end, Scott Gumbleton and Matthew Lloyd will play in the forward half. We will have to see how Jay Neagle comes up later in the week to determine whether he will play but it will be exciting to see those guys together given they have had limited game-time as a group and will all play a key role in 2009.
Tom Bellchambers and David Hille will also be spending time in the forward line and it will be good for us to see if we can get the mechanics of the forward line right. Obviously it’s a fairly tall and fairly strong forward line but we need to make sure we are in the position to take those big marks in the forward line to really capitalise on it.
INS AND OUTS
We are really looking forward to seeing Bellchambers play. He has had a stellar pre-season this year after joining us late last in 2007. He has done a lot more preparation this year and it will be great to see him go against the Bulldogs’ ruckmen because they have a good spread whether they be the seniors or younger blokes. It is important for him to keep getting game time under his belt.
David Hille is fine and has been named in the squad of 29. He has probably come to hand fairly quickly over the past couple of weeks. He played in the club’s intra club practice match last week and looked fine then he came to me first thing on Monday and said he would love to play. He thrives on hard work and plays better footy when he has more workload so he is really keen to get match fitness under his belt having missed four weeks with the hamstring and the stingray incident. He probably feels he has a little bit of catching up to do from a fitness point of view.
Andrew Lovett is going to play. He went to the All-Star game in Darwin last week against Adelaide and played 60% of the game. He came out of the game fairly unscathed and felt really fresh on Monday morning and we made the decision then that we would play him. Part of the reason why a lot of these guys are playing is because we have the weekend off the following weekend and also the enormity of the bushfire appeal and what it means to Australians and the Essendon Football Club. There were a few guys who would have missed that are pretty keen to play and I guess having been involved in the community game in Mildura a couple of years ago when the tragedy occurred with the young people, it probably enlightened our players to the importance of humanity issues and tragedies so I think a lot of players are really looking forward to supporting this game.
LAST TIME THE TEAMS MET
I’d expect to see a relatively tight tussle on Friday night because both teams would be relatively evenly matched at this time of the year. The Western Bulldogs had a very strong year last year which was capped off with a Preliminary finals berth so they are clearly a quality team and we will need to be at the top of our game to ensure the game is competitive.
The personnel available to either side will be a factor in who gets the result in the end. Considering it is still only early February, the availability of players is one variable that may separate the two sides. It also depends on where each club is at in their pre-season training program.
There are a lot of mechanics that go into the NAB cup and sometimes it can be a pointer for the main season but occasionally history suggests otherwise. I don’t think there will be much between the sides and we are going out there as a club to win the game and we think any game we participate in we want to win and this will be the way we will be treating it.
