Senior coach John Worsfold spoke to the media on Thursday morning in the lead-up to Saturday's clash with Port Adelaide at Adelaide Oval.

Here's how he responded to the key questions.

In the past, the club has tried to talk him (Conor McKenna) around, keep him at the club and given him options to go back and forth (between Ireland and Australia). In the end, did you let him have this call? Can you talk us through that?

"The club has never tried to talk him around on anything. It has supported him in what he's wanted to do. It's not our job to convince people to things against where their heart lies, it's to support them in the decisions they make.

"Conor wanted to come to Australia and challenge himself to become a bonafide AFL footballer, which he's done. He wanted to head home last year for a family engagement, which we fully supported. That raised some eyebrows for some people, but that was the right thing to do - to put his family and life ahead of just a game of footy.

"To see the relief on Conor's face to be able to make the commitment to say he needs to head to home, it absolutely was the right decision. Fighting the expectation of not letting a team down, not letting the club down, not letting supporters down and hanging in there to play AFL footy just because he was on a contract, was just a very heavy weight to bear. We really appreciate everything Conor brought to our footy club, and understand it was a very unique situation. He's in a really good position and happy with what he's doing now."

John, some pretty strong comments from Matthew Lloyd this week. He said the club was a laughing stock of the competition. What did you make of those? Are they treated any differently given his standing at the club as a former captain and premiership player?

"I think they're Matthew's personal opinions. I'm not sure if he's garnered any support with those, but that's his job as a commentator, not a journalist. I don't expect him to make journalistic comments, so he's just an opinion-maker and he's welcome to do that if that's the way he feels.

"He's not making them as an Essendon champion, he's making them as someone who needs to earn his pay. If that's how he needs to do it, then that's fine. I really don't mind people out there doing their job, and that's what Matthew is doing. There's no issue with it at all."

Off the back of a difficult performance on the weekend and some other struggles as well this season, are you satisfied you're handing over this team in a strong position to perform and for success?

"Absolutely I am. There's been some factors which have meant we haven't been able to get a couple of extra wins we would have liked this year. The No.1 thing is to learn from that, to learn from why we haven't been able to get the best team on the park and have maybe six or seven of our best players unavailable week to week. If we address that and Ben has his best squad available, we'll make massive in-roads.

"Ben takes over a team now that is 12 months into a new game-plan, so Ben's not having to start from scratch next year. That's a massive step forward for the footy club. We haven't been able to practise it and train it as much as we would have liked due to the circumstances this year, but the players have a really strong understanding of what they're working towards. Having another pre-season under that, where nothing will be new but just consolidated, means the club will be in a better position than if if they were starting from scratch going into a new pre-season with a new game-plan.

"The improvement in young players like Ridley and McGrath in new roles has been outstanding. I think everyone's clear in how the side's shaping up and how it's going to look as the group plays more footy together and matures into what should be a really strong squad."

You talk about being measured by performance. What would be your message be to members, who would have hoped for more this year?

"Just trust that this group is coming together really well, that our best team on the park we haven't seen at all this year, but when we've been close to that, we've seem some really exciting footy.

"Even taking into account the challenges we've faced this year with unavailability of our best squad, we're still knocking on the door of the eight. The fact that we've been challenging for that right at this point should be really heartening.

"I know people will see the disappointing side of not being embedded in the eight, but at the start of the year if we were one of the teams that people thought could possibly finish up in the top eight, and then you take into account the decimation of the list, I'm proud of the way the guys have fought on. That doesn't mean it's been perfect, but (despite) a new game-plan with limited availability of our best squad, we've made in-roads on where we want to get to. I still have a lot of confidence in what this group is building."

Will Joe Daniher play this week and what are the plans for him for the last couple of games this year?

"He'll train today. Providing normal protocols where we assess the whole list after a main training session, Joe will be playing this week. If he pulls up from that (Port Adelaide game) well and his form is good enough, he'll play the following week as well.

"As we talked about last week, the third game in a really close string of games was a high risk for someone coming back from such a long layoff, and with Joe's issues, we believe we made the right call to freshen him and give him the week off to make sure we reduce those risks. Part of his progression to get him back to playing his best footy for the Essendon Football Club was to miss last week and then finish off the season really strongly."