The Essendon Bombers simply must defeat the Gold Coast Suns this Saturday night if they want to keep their season alive.
With a fortnight of football left, the Bombers are in tenth, two spots out of the top eight – but an easy finish to the year has them in the box seat to make finals.
While opposition sides like the Bulldogs (Port Adelaide, Hawthorn) and West Coast (GWS, Adelaide) have tough finishes to the year, the Bombers have Fremantle after this match – two bottom-five sides.
Combine that with a healthy enough percentage, and Essendon will slip into the top eight if they can win out from here and both the Bulldogs and Eagles lose at least one of their matches.
Gold Coast on the other hand, their season is quite done, and their recent has been below par. In the end, it’s no surprise that Rodney Eade lost his job a week ago.
The Suns have lost their last six matches in a row. Last week, in their first match under interim coach Dean Solomon, they copped a 58-point loss from bottom-of-the-ladder Brisbane.
There’s significant change coming for this club at the end of 2017, and at the end, most minds there are probably thinking more about that than this week’s match.
Essendon have won five of the seven matches these sides have ever played, but Gold Coast two of the last three – though one of those came last year when many Essendon players were banned, and the other was by less than a goal.
Gold Coast have lost Jarryd Lyons, Daniel Currie and Sean Lemmens to injury and have dropped all of Jack Bowes, Alex Sexton and Jack Scrimshaw.
In come Jack Leslie, Pearce Hanley, Brayden Fiorini, Keegan Brooksby, Jesse Lonergan and Mitch Hallahan.
The Bomber are missing Michael Hurley and Matthew Leuenberger through injury, and are resting Jobe Watson, also dropping all of Travis Colyer, Ben Howlett and Matt Dea.
Zach Merrett is back, as are Michael Hartley, Craig Bird, Tom Bellchambers and Mark Baguley, and they’re also debuting Josh Begley.
All things considered this should be a comfortable win to the Bombers and $2.80 for them to win by 40+ looks like good value.
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