Scott Lucas has warned the Bombers not to get ahead of themselves in the lead up to the pre-season semi-final this Friday night, despite Essendon looking very impressive in their previous two NAB Cup wins.

Although Lucas is pleased with the way the Bombers have been travelling so far this year, he maintains that the teams’ focus is to play competitive football in Round 1 of the season proper.

“A lot of our younger players played very, very well which is particularly pleasing and was something that we needed to focus on in order to improve this year. But let’s keep it in perspective, it is only February,” Lucas said.

“I think winning is much better than getting smacked by 10 goals but I think that you can read too much into it, which I think we have been very wary of doing, and we will just approach the game.

“Knighter has rested some guys and he has brought others into the team and I think that gives the guys perspective that we are not focusing too heavily at the moment and that we are focusing further ahead.

“If we were playing our best team every week and tapering training then you would start to think well maybe that is as good as we can go but that hasn’t been the case and we will continue very hard in the lead up to Round 1 which is our focus.""

A key element of the Bombers’ past two victories has been their ability to move the ball quickly out of defence but Lucas believes is it their use of the ball, rather than leg speed, which is contributing to this feature of Essendon’s play.

“I think like any team, we have about half a dozen different focuses at any time but moving the ball out of defence is certainly something that we have put a lot of time into with our practice and the results have been very pleasing,"" he said.

“The guys are pretty fit but I don’t think the guys have been running a whole lot more, I think the ball movement has been the noticeable speed up and while the ball is moving fast, there is the perception that we are running faster and harder but there is no significant changes in the ground that we are covering – well at least that is what the data is saying.""

Not disillusioned about how quickly things can change in football, Lucas was not prepared to give away too much when asked to give a gauge of where he thought the Bombers were at this season.

“I think we will know come Round 22,” Lucas said.

“I think we are heading in the right direction and I don’t think that we are going the wrong way about it. Obviously it is better to win but we are seeing sides playing great footy at this time of year and not having the season that many would expect and vice versa.