Essendon coach Brad Scott admitted his players looked demoralised and were guilty of playing selfish football at times during Sunday’s disappointing loss to Port Adelaide.
On the back of last week’s 62-point thrashing by Hawthorn, the Bombers trailed by as much as 80 points at Adelaide Oval before suffering a 63-point defeat at the hands of the rampant Power.
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Scott conceded it was apparent that there was a lack of desire to defend from some of his players at stages of the lopsided contest.
“I think it’s part of it because it’d be ridiculous for me to say that’s not the case,” Scott said.
“We’re not hard-nosed enough in defence, full stop, and that’s just not defenders — that’s all over the ground.
“I’m a coach who very rarely questions lack of effort, a lack of fight because you know these guys well enough that they’ll always give that, but there’s no doubt we’re demoralised, and that can appear to look like lack of effort, a lack of fight.
“Nate Caddy is a terrific young man, and he’s a great footballer, but you miss a goal from three metres out directly in front (and) your team’s demoralised.
“It’s my job as coach to keep them up and we’re working extremely hard at our club, we’ve done a hell of a lot of work.
“Probably on the surface, the way results have unfolded the first two weeks of the season … it appears we’ve taken at least a step back with the view to go forward, and we want to build a club and a culture that is based on team-first, and we can’t have selfishness from players who think about themselves.
“And we’ve done a lot of work to make sure we don’t have that. But when things are really hard and you get demoralised, human nature is to think about yourself.”
He added: “Our pressure was non-existent. We butchered the ball when we had it.
“We’ve got an enormous amount of work to do on our defence full stop. But when you’re turning the ball over in horrible parts of the ground … no one’s set up to defend that.”
Taking last season’s results into account, the loss to Port extended Essendon’s losing streak to 15 games, which Scott conceded could be affecting morale.
“We learned our lessons from last year, I’ve never seen a year like last year in terms of (injury),” he said.
“I’m not saying we wipe that, but I think it’s a fair question, because does it start to build and weigh on players?
“I don’t think they’d be human if it didn’t, and it probably weighs on everyone. But again, you develop a mental toolkit to deal with that, and those that have been in the game long enough and stay in the game, have got it and use it.
“Right now, not enough of our group have it, and they certainly have mastered it.”
To rub salt in the wounds, Mason Redman (knee) and Dyson Sharp (ankle) didn’t see out the game and will be sent for scans.
Originally published as ‘Selfishness … butchered it’: Dons coach rips into embarrasing side
