Essendon’s players have pulled up well following the Club’s second JLT Community Series match against Gold Coast on Sunday.
The game was played in hot conditions in Mackay, with humidity also a factor.
High Performance Manager Justin Crow said the heat will aid the players conditioning.
“The smaller ground and the shorter game time made it a little bit easier,” Crow said.
“We were able to wear heart rate straps in that game and we were really happy with the conditioning effect that our guys got from playing up in the heat.”
Michael Hurley was the only player to suffer an injury on the weekend, but he remains a chance of playing in the final pre-season game against Geelong on Sunday March 12.
David Myers’ return will be some weeks away, but the long kicking midfielder is recovering well following surgery on his finger last week.
“The surgeon’s advice is that it will be six weeks in a splint and then two weeks after that until he’s able to play,” Crow said.
“So eight weeks from the time of his surgery which was last Thursday.
“We’ll be hoping to get him back involved in some training, while obviously protecting his hand, as early as we can."
Tom Bellchambers is getting closer to resuming full training after undergoing knee surgery in January.
“Tom is continuing to integrate into more football work,” Crow said.
“He’ll do a small part of training tomorrow and continue to build up from there.”
Essendon made 11 changes to the side for the second JLT Community Series match against Gold Coast.
Aside from the normal match conditioning considerations, illness was also a factor in the make-up of the final line-up.
“Aaron [Francis] got sick early in the week and then recovered well enough to play in the VFL intra-club on Saturday morning,” Crow said.
“Kobe [Mutch], his housemate, got it [sickness] a little bit later and missed out on playing anywhere on the weekend.
“Craig Bird was also sick so hopefully we’ve got that out of our system and all the guys are back up and healthy today.”
With no game on this weekend, the Bombers will ramp up their training loads later this week ahead of the match against the Cats next week.
