Jobe Watson celebrates Essendon's win last night.
James Hird believes his Essendon players will emerge from the club’s most challenging times relating to drug investigations a better football team.
The Bombers’ coach was naturally buoyed by their stunning 35-point win over Adelaide at AAMI Stadium last night, but refused to accept this surprisingly comfortable performance was based on emotion alone.
“Emotion only takes you so far,” Hird said. “I didn’t find that the players before the game were overly emotional; I think our first 10 minutes showed we may have been a bit flatter than perhaps we could have.
“From a point of view the way we played the game, obviously it means a lot to us. Every game of football we are playing at the moment we have the eyes of the footballing public on us, so we want to put on a good performance.
“It would be too simplistic to say that game was won on emotion. There was some very good football played there. I have said over this whole period of six weeks the level of training and standard of training that the Essendon players have been able to produce through this investigation has been of an elite level. It has surprised me and I was very proud of the way they played.
“We did not have to mention the investigation before the game or during the week; it gets mentioned every day. We didn’t say we wanted to win because of this.
“We want to be a good football team, and this (investigation) will pass. There is a long way to go in the investigation and we will come out of the end of it as a good football team when that finishes.
“Tonight was a good football performance, but it is round one and there is a lot more to of the season to go.”
Essendon trailed 22 points to nothing just 11 minutes into the game, and Hird left no doubt that he was proud of the way his players turned the game around both physically and mentally.
When asked whether he learnt something special about his players during this stunning recovery, Hird said: “I have leant something about the players over the past six weeks that I probably didn’t expect to happen as quickly, and that was their mental resilience in then way they handle adversity.
“You expect that to come over time, but an event like the one we have had may have hastened that ability to handle adversity.”
It was a special performance for many reasons, including the fact Dustin Fletcher, who at 38 in May is clearly the oldest player in the competition, stood up to be counted in game in which Essendon was scrutinised so much, as did Nick Kommer, 22, a first-game player who was picked up as a mature-age recruit from East Perth. When Kommer goaled midway through the last quarter scribes suggested it put a full stop to Adelaide, and there will be many exclamation marks to follow his name this season.
Hird also quite rightly sang the praises of the many players in between in terms of experience to rose to a new level last night, and among them were Heath Hocking with his brilliant negating play, Ben Howlett, who kicked four goals, and David Myers.
Adelaide coach Brenton Sanderson almost seemed mystified by the manner in which his players were brushed aside by a stronger Essendon, reflected by a shameful statistic relating to tackles – 47 to Essendon’s 73.
He offered no excuses, praised Essendon for its performance especially under the circumstances, and left a chilling thought that the Crows still needed to find answers in the forward and backlines before taking on the Brisbane Lions at the Gabba on Saturday, April 6.
