Wet weather at the MCG left Essendon at a ‘significant disadvantage’ at a crucial stage of their Anzac Day loss to Collingwood, with a communications blackout at the venue forcing the Bombers and the AFL to resort to drastic measures.

The Bombers took the lead amid a stirring comeback midway through the third quarter, but gave up five of the next six to the Magpies to eventually succumb by 41 points.

However, they were severely impacted after the rain ‘sparked out the communications’ at the MCG, according to Fox Footy’s Jon Ralph – who initially reported that Collingwood were spared issues.

“Chaos down here for most of the third quarter,” Ralph said.

“Collingwood had full communications, Essendon had very little, so they weren’t able to access their stats or their vision boards. They were able to communicate with the box, but it has been chaos.”

Commentator Garry Lyon said the issue ‘certainly doesn’t help’.

“That’s a really interesting development there, given that they kicked the first two goals [of the third quarter], got themselves out to a lead,” Lyon said.

“If that’s when communications went down… it certainly doesn’t help.”

“It is disarming the coaching in this game a fair bit,” co-commentator David King added.

Jason Dunstall, meanwhile, called for an alternative approach such as ‘back-up walkie talkies’ to be used.

“There’s got to be some system in place so that one team’s not disadvantaged,” he said.

The outage left the AFL scrambling, with Ralph reporting that the Bombers were permitted to use mobile phones while the issue was fixed.

He added that the Magpies had been impacted by a less severe outage.

“I’ve spoken to the AFL bench official here and they’re in uncharted territory,” Ralph said.

“Normally, of course, given the integrity concerns they’re not allowed to do that [use mobile phones], but that was granted to them.”

While the issue was fixed midway through the final quarter, Ralph also reported that the Bombers were unable to look at vision of potential injuries – including an ankle concern for utility Harrison Jones, who was subbed out of the game at three quarter time.

“It’s a significant story here,” he said on Fox Footy.

“Thankfully they’ve had that communication restored, but even looking at some of the injuries – like we saw with Harry Jones, they wanted to see the mechanism of that.

“It’s been a significant disadvantage for the Essendon Football Club.”