Sunday night\u2019s 30-point loss to West Coast in Perth<\/a>.<\/p>\n\u201cI\u2019ve sort of had to control what I can control, focus on what I had to focus on, and that\u2019s sort of leading this club, and these staff members, and the players in the short term. \u201cAnd so I don\u2019t think it\u2019s going to have any impact on me. And I can\u2019t really speak on behalf of the players, but I\u2019m sure we\u2019re all locked into what we need to do right now.<\/p>\n
\u201cOnly the last sort of 48 hours, we\u2019ve been able to coach the new game plan.<\/p>\n
King: “The key for me is James Hird!” | 01:57<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s been a tough week. There\u2019s no doubt about that.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe players and staff earlier in the week, it really affected them as it should and would, but it felt like the last 48 hours we sort of gathered ourselves and really connected and focused on this game.\u201d<\/p>\n
And for a lot of that game against the Eagles, the Bombers were up for the contest.<\/p>\n
They won the clearances 44-23, mostly on the back of Rising Star nominee Sullivan Robey. They also won contested possession and although they didn\u2019t get the ball forward as much as the Eagles (55-41 inside 50s), when they did, they worked hard to keep it there with 18 forward 50 tackles.<\/p>\n
New coach, same old Essendon | 02:37<\/p>\n
The game was really lost in the period between the 18-minute mark of the second quarter and the eight minute mark of the third when the Eagles piled on eight goals.<\/p>\n
Solomon said during that time, they lost their composure and their discipline was not where they needed it to be.<\/p>\n
But the biggest change between the Scott Bombers and the Solomon version was the move of Ben McKay into attack.<\/p>\n
The usual key defender started the game there and helped out Nick Bryan in the ruck, only finding out about the change the day before the game.<\/p>\n
He had 14 possessions and took three marks, kicking 1.1 and in doing so doubled his goals kicked tally over his 114-game career.<\/p>\n
But Solomon said he\u2019d be given opportunities to add more.<\/p>\n
McQualter praises ‘mature’ Eagles | 09:23<\/p>\n
\u201cSo, he got told (Saturday) morning he was going to play as a forward, so to his credit, absorbs information, goes studies it, and puts his craft to work,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd there\u2019s parts of it we saw tonight we liked, there\u2019s parts that he can improve, absolutely.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut right here, right now, absolutely, we\u2019ll stick with it.<\/p>\n
\u201cAlso, I\u2019d like to see (Zach) Reid go forward at times.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo, it might be Ben McKay and Reid swapping at times, depending on what the game\u2019s telling us.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019d like to have players have a little bit of flexibility as we sort of complete this year.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Essendon caretaker coach Dean Solomon is limiting his exposure to any outside rumours and media reports about the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":707316,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[560],"tags":[638,64,63,689,55,639,29651,696,344068,35347,143664,344069,11231,48340,3523,7145,344067,133787,68970,677,344066,46,344070,105353,85,150844,3439],"class_list":["post-707315","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-afl","tag-afl","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-australia-and-new-zealand","tag-australian-football-league","tag-australianfootballleague","tag-ben-mckay","tag-brad-scott","tag-candid-reveal","tag-conference-video","tag-dean-solomon","tag-dons-caretaker","tag-essendon-bombers","tag-james-hird","tag-key-defender","tag-king","tag-maligned-star","tag-media-reports","tag-nick-bryan","tag-oceania","tag-outside-rumours","tag-perth","tag-positional-switch","tag-shock-switch","tag-sports","tag-staff-members","tag-western-australia"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/707315","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=707315"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/707315\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/707316"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=707315"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=707315"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=707315"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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