There has never been a team in the history of Australian Rules football to turn up their noses at four premiership points, no matter how ugly.
Essendon needed those points more desperately than most; after a week of intense scrutiny on the club, on everything from training standards to Brad Scott’s coaching to the desperation of the group, a more intense showing against Port Adelaide was the only tonic.
And so it was that the Bombers, duly chastened by last week’s disheartening loss to Adelaide, came out with a ferocity and a determination to redeem themselves, and courtesy of the last four goals of the game, ran over the top of the Power for their first win of the season.
But no one, Essendon supporter or otherwise, should be fooled by anything that happened at Marvel Stadium on Thursday. This was no reawakening of a mighty team, nor even a middle-of-the-road one turning the corner and getting things back on track.
The Bombers were abysmal for most of the night: they just had the good fortune to come up against an opponent who were even worse.
Was there improvement from last week? Absolutely – it would be hard to play worse than they did against the Crows. But it’s also hard to say with any definity whether the turnaround was caused by their own endeavour, or by Port being both incapable and unwilling to throw at them anything like the force Adelaide did at the MCG.
The first five minutes nicely summed this up: utter Bomber domination, repeat inside 50s, control of stoppages, all for no score, and then one entry up the other end, a dismal attempt from Ben McKay to defend Mitch Georgiades one-on-one with zero help from his teammates, a straight kick, and suddenly Port had drawn first blood.
The Dons’ backline remains an area of major concern; Georgiades ran riot in the first quarter with leading marks galore as the Bombers time and time again left acres of space for him to move into.
That’s when they weren’t messing things up themselves: I doubt Jaxon Prior endeared himself to many new fans with this utterly bizarre spoiling attempt when he could either a) have marked the ball, or b) sent it 15 rows back with a monster fist. Instead, he bunts it into the air, then is knocked to ground competing for it straight afterwards, and in the end Port walk it in.
That the Bombers held Port to exactly 101 points fewer than the Crows managed last week is down to two factors. One: their midfield dominance, especially at stoppages, saw the Power muster just 44 inside 50s, a full 19 fewer than the Crows, and barely get a look in in the final quarter when the match was on the line. (And then when they did, things like Jason Horne-Francis dropping an uncontested mark 45 out, or Darcy Byrne-Jones running freely to 50, kicking at Ivan Soldo in the goalsquare, and getting it so wrong as to present Zach Reid with an easy intercept mark, would happen).
And two: Georgiades aside, there was no one down there for Port to kick it to.
From trying to defend Darcy Fogarty, Riley Thilthorpe and Taylor Walker last week, who spread exceptionally to divide and conquer their opponents one on one – Reid in particular was given a torrid time by Fogarty – suddenly, the Bombers’ backs were up against Georgiades, a handful of smalls, and Soldo, who looks as much a key forward as a flamingo on rollerskates.
After Georgiades dominated the first quarter, taking three marks inside 50 and adding a fourth early in the second quarter, he was all but taken out of the game, denied a run and jump at the ball by the quicker Reid and caught holding the ball a couple of times when he tried to butter up at ground level.
Six marks inside 50 five minutes into the second quarter ended with 11 at full time, none more to their sole key forward. Fogarty, Thilthorpe and Walker are simply in a different league.
The skill level was abysmal on both sides, too; I lost count of the number of slewed kicks off the side of the boot, or aimless bombs long instead of trying to hit a lead-up target, or chip passes constantly getting to their intended teammate on the half-volley – my favourite, incidentally, was Ben Hobbs trying to curl a kick on the boundary line inside 50 and instead scrubbing it out on the full all of five metres on.
The tackling was frequently sloppy, with the Bombers’ early pressure quickly evaporating (by midway through the last term, both teams’ pressure factor was in the 160s, well below the AFL average of 182). Take Jye Menzie, who after watching Ollie Wines drop the simplest of chest marks, instantly undoes the stroke of luck with a dismal attempt at a tackle.
In the end, the Bombers had the legs – and perhaps, after a week of scrutiny, the extra motivation – to take the Power apart in the last quarter when the sniff of a win was in their lungs.
But there are a good dozen teams in the competition, probably more, who wouldn’t have allowed it. Do you think the Crows of last week are giving up a goal with quite this dismal a skill error with the game on the line?
The defining passage of play of the evening – the Bombers’ end-to-end running goal to spark their final-quarter charge – is the game in a nutshell. It’s one team, desperate but ungainly, doing just enough to overwhelm an opponent that had ample opportunity to shut it down, or even to hurt going the other way, but squandered them all.
It’s admittedly dashing play to start the chain from newly installed sub Saad El-Hawli, gathering a loose ball inside 50, giving to Sam Durham and then dashing ahead; but it’s worth noting that the Port player who began to chase him, Joe Richards, noticeably decelerates after the Bomber handpasses off, wrongly thinking his job is done.
Under pressure from Connor Rozee, we’ll forgive Durham’s handball being a little wayward (he was aiming at Zach Merrett, after all), but it’s El-Hawli who has taken centre stage now.
Jinking in midfield, he embarrasses Kane Farrell, who in jumping to try and smother a faked handball allows himself to be simply run around; but the Bombers look to let themselves down at precisely the point an actual kick is required, as has been the tale frequently throughout the night.
El-Hawli’s kick is ambitious, but cute, and ill directed. It lands about a metre in front of Isaac Kako in the central corridor, who can’t gather cleanly, all while Josh Sinn is bearing down on him.
Bafflingly, though, Sinn is content to corral, hesitating on an attempt to tackle for a crucial half-second. It’s enough for Kako to gather cleanly after his initial fumble, enough for Nic Martin to be in the right place at the right time for a handball receive, Willie Rioli a good five metres behind him and not making up any ground.
As the camera pans out, Port’s defensive disarray is apparent: Aliir Aliir and Esava Ratugolea have been drawn too far up the ground, and are now sprinting back towards goal in the corridor, 30 metres away from where Martin now heads in the same direction.
I’m not sure why, but Nate Caddy, the one Bomber ahead of the ball, starts leading towards the pocket; with so much space, honestly his best bet is to either lead straight at Martin, or head towards the goalsquare to draw his man, Miles Bergman, away from his teammate to let him waltz in even further.
As it stands, Martin still kicks from 40 metres out; he’s under no pressure, but it’s still a far tougher kick than Port’s wide-open defensive 50 has any right to provide.
He nails it, but given the kicking on display all evening, it’s one of the few instances where one could applaud a legitimately good bit of skill.
Throughout the play, every Bomber involved had a Port player trailing in their slipstream, powerless to influence the contest or force a turnover, despite the opportunities provided to them.
A good team simply isn’t allowing themselves to be opened up so completely in midfield by such a clunkily executed play.
But Port Adelaide are not that team.
The Bombers remain frail defensively, dismal by foot and far too reliant on Zach Merrett for any spread in midfield.
But footy is a game of swings and roundabouts, and where last week they’d had the misfortune of playing a powerful side at top gear capable of taking advantage of all their weaknesses, this week’s opponent… had none of that.
Essendon were still bad on Thursday night. It’s just, Port were even worse.
