Essendon – 14.16 (100)
West Coast – 20.12 (132)
West Coast has been led to its first win in 8 weeks thanks to a spectacular 12 goal haul from forward Mark LeCras. The first quarter was fairly close, with LeCras kicking all of West Coast’s four goals, as the Eagles took a three point lead at the first change. They simply kept stretching the lead at each break, as LeCras continued to add goals to his tally, eventually running out to a 32 point victory.
LeCras now has 50 goals for the year and sits third in the hunt for the Coleman Medal. Meanwhile the Bombers seem to be looking strong for the wooden spoon, especially from the bookies viewpoint with Essendon sitting at $3.80 behind West Coast who sit at $2.80 favourites.
Key Players for Essendon
Travis Colyer – 27 disposals, with 9 contested possessions and 2.1. One of the few Bombers to have any kind of impact.
Brent Stanton – 21 disposals for the night, with an efficiency of 81%. Also contributed 3 goals and had 8 inside 50s.
Key Players for West Coast
Mark LeCras – Just spectacular. 12.2. for the night and he churned through 5 opponents for he night. The rest has been said.
Matthew Priddis – Dominated in the midfield to collect 33 disposals, with 12 contested possessions, 6 tackles, and 9 clearances.
Musings from the match
- The Bombers keep saying there isn’t any internal problems at the club, but surely that has to be a lie?
- Mark LeCras had a cracker, obviously.
- Essendon only had 4 less inside 50s, but West Coast had 9 more assists.
- Essendon are getting too many goals from midfielders and not enough from forwards.
- Matt Priddis continues his maturing as a good midfielder and often doesn’t get the praise he deserves in my opinion.
- Jay Neagle had enough shots with 1.4. to his name.
SuperCoach Points – Highs and Lows
Mark LeCras (226) leads this pack unsurprisingly. He was joined by teammates Matt Priddis (148), Ashton Hams (128), Andrew Embley (122), and Adam Selwood (121). For the Dons it was youngster Travis Colyer (113), with Brent Stanton (109), Jason Winderlich (107), and Nathan Lovett-Murray (102) close behind.
Tom Belchambers (14) had the lowest score for the night, with Jake Melksham (28), Eric Mackenzie (31), Courtenay Demspey (34), Mark McVeigh (38), and Alwyn Davey (39) all doing poorly. Note that there is only one Eagle in that list.
Tags: Brent Stanton, Mark LeCras, Matthew Priddis, Travis Colyer
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Sorry I didn’t respond earlier, Ben. A bit depressing, eh! I think I was right about missing Welsh, but even with him I suspect Le Cras would have got a few.
On the bright side, a couple of things worth considering.
First there was Colyer. I thought Colyer was great, and the sign of things to come!
Second, despite the “hype” about “young” sides like Melbourne and Richmond, Essendon have actually been fielding the least experienced team in the AFL just about every week this year, measured in terms of players with less than 50 games to their name. Only one other team comes close.
We had 13 last week, pretty typical of the sides we have put on the field since the early win over Hawthorn (when we only played 10 under 50 gamers). Since then, the lowest number has been 12 and sometimes we’ve had 14. With Lovett Murray out with a touch of gastro, and the other changes, it will be 14 this week – over 63% of the team.
By comparison Geelong had three such players last week, St Kilda had two, and Collingwood had 8. Melbourne had 8 and Richmond had 10.
If you are feeling “flat” about the “slide” from scraping into the finals last year, we were generally only playing 8, 9 or sometimes 10 “under 50 gamers” last year.
Like Geelong in 2003, when Bomber was in his 4th year of coaching the team, we’ve got rid of the old and blooded one heck of a lot of new players and are paying for it . Geelong had just five wins, too, at this stage of the 2003 season, despite the presence of future “superstars” like Ablett, Chapman, Bartel and Johnson. The fans were howling for blood just as they are with us.
One of the fascinating things about the coming match with Norths this weekend is that they are fielding a side almost as inexperienced as our own. The other bunch of real “tyros” in the competition this year are North Melbourne, rather than the Richmond, Melbourne and Carlton sides normally put in this category by the media. They too have 14 players fronting up with less than 50 games behind them. This is the first time this year that we’ve actually met a club on such “equal terms”!
Makes for an interesting game.
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