Essendon midfielder Dyson Heppell has urged his teammates to stand up when it is counted following Friday night’s nine-point loss to Geelong.

Heppell is hopeful a player driven post game meeting will be the catalyst to drive his teammates to become more accountable.

The 22-year-old was a star for the Bombers in Friday night’s loss collecting a career high 40 disposals in a best on ground performance.

“Bomber is driving the younger guys and the entire team to really stand up,” Heppell told BomberTV.

“We have to do something that we haven’t done before, we have to come out of our shells to really drive each other.

“We have to be really selfless and really care about each other.”

Heppell was gutted following the club’s third close loss of the season, after failing to hold on to a three-point lead with two minutes remaining.

“It is a very disappointing result after we fought our way back into the game really well.”

“The last five or six minutes of the game just let us down again.

“We went over the last five or six minutes of the game but it was really player driven to see where we went wrong.”

The Bombers young star said there was a key focus on improving their accountability at half time, which led to an improved second half performance.

“At half time we really looked at our accountability, guys knowing who they were on and we went to a really one on one type of game.”

“That created a contest, we were able to win more of the ball in that instance and managed to lock the ball in our half.

“We knew Geelong were going to throw everything at us, they are hard at the contest and that is where they got on top of us.

“We worked our way back into the game, played accountable footy but we went away from that in the final five or six minutes.”

Essendon now turns its attention to Saturday night’s must win clash against ladder leader Port Adelaide at Adelaide Oval.