Injured Essendon midfielder Dylan Shiel says his teammates are under no illusions about the improvements they need to make despite their rich vein of form.
The 10th-placed Bombers have shot into finals contention on the back of four wins from their past five games, with a testing fortnight to come against top-four sides Melbourne and Geelong.
Shiel, who has watched the Bombers’ recent improvement from the sidelines as he recovers from a knee injury, said his teammates weren’t allowing for any complacency to creep in.
“In terms of the progress, we’ve made some serious gains in recent times, but we’re still out of the eight and not quite at the level to be playing finals footy. We’ve still got so much work to do, and we understand that as well,” Shiel told RSN 927 on Thursday.
“We’re not at The Hangar every day patting ourselves on the back about taking it up to good teams. We know we’ve got a long way to go and we’re pretty harsh on ourselves in the way we review our footy.
“We’re trying to do everything we can to get up to playing high-level, premiership-standard football.
“The opportunity the next two weeks presents to our players is super important. We’re going to learn so much about ourselves.”
The Bombers will be unfortunately be without Shiel against Melbourne and Geelong, with the star 28-year-old still up to a month away from returning from a posterior cruciate ligament tear sustained in the round two loss to Port Adelaide.
Shiel said his recovery period was on track.
“I’m still a little while off. Things are going well with the recovery. I’m just building up my running and training loads and can hopefully be back out there in a few weeks with the guys,” he said.
“It’s about a 16-week recovery, and at the moment I’m at week 12. If I’m to do it on time and to the schedule, it’s probably another four weeks.
“Sometimes it depends on how the knee pulls up after running and training. You just have to be really careful in reading the body. At the moment it’s been good, so hopefully I’ll make a return at the 16-week mark.”
