Essendon will look to increase its depth in the midfield during this year’s trade and draft periods.

The Bombers have been hurt by a host of injuries to its prime movers throughout the season.

Jobe Watson, David Zaharakis, David Myers, Zach Merrett, Travis Colyer, Heath Hocking and ruckman Tom Bellchambers have all spent time on the sidelines. 

With some of the club’s best on-ballers getting towards the last few years of their careers, Coach James Hird said the club would look to bolster its depth. 

“We need quality midfielders,” he said.

“Some of our midfielders are getting on in age and they’ve obviously got two or three years left in them, but we need to now re-stock that.” 

The Bombers will this season fail to qualify for the finals for the first time since 2012. 

“It’s certainly been a year we haven’t been able to achieve on-field what we wanted to achieve, but you have those years,” Hird said. 

“When you’ve been in the game for 25 years, you have years where you over-achieve, you have years where you under-achieve and years where you don’t win as many games as you would have liked. 

“The ability for a good club – and we think we’re a good club – is a club that rebounds and works out what it hasn’t done well and rebounds in 2016.”