Essendon coach Brad Scott has commended the Western Bulldogs after their 91-point win over his side on Saturday night, but has defended the Bombers' game plan and overall efforts despite the final scoreboard.
The Bulldogs were hot from the start of the contest, branching out to a seven-goal buffer at quarter-time alone, holding the Bombers to just three points by the first break, and nine points at halftime.
"Slick" with their ball movement, despite Essendon's season-best pressure rating, the Bulldogs' cleanliness and ability to absorb the Bombers' pressure was the key on the night, and also why Scott wasn't ruthless in his assessment of his club, rather praising the Bulldogs for a flawless display.
"Somewhat ironically, in a big loss like that, some of the important things we needed to get done tonight, we actually did," Scott said.
"McKay on Naughton, Setterfield (negating) Bontempelli. If you'd said at the start of the night that we'd manage those two things, you'd think, 'Well, that's a pretty good start', but I thought they were exceptional across the board in terms of team performance, and equally as good as they were, we were poor."
Scott admitted that skill execution, particularly defensively, was the major disappointment on the night, with broken tackles across the first half the glaring trend that resulted in Essendon's false start.
"I think they kicked their first three goals from broken tackles, and that was a bit of a theme for the night was tackling statistics. I think they came out roughly even throughout the night and our pressure numbers were very good... but we tackled at 40 per cent and they tackled at 70 per cent," Scott said.
"Even when we did tackle them, they were able to support the contest really well and get the ball out. That all can compound into numbers like 1000 metres difference from stoppage, which obviously compounds into the inside 50 differential."
Scott continued his defence of Essendon's approach in their second-half effort, stating the margin continued to increase due to the implementation of an attacking brand following halftime to try to make the game turn, although it ultimately allowed for the Bulldogs to continue their attacking fluency.
"We definitely made the margin worse by trying to attack," Scott said.
"We wanted to go back and really use it as an opportunity to play against a really good team and reset the scoreboard in our own mind and attack them.
"We turned the ball over a lot trying to attack, and we have to tidy that part of the game up. But we're not interested, in the team we are right now, of just trying to hold up. Against good teams, we want to try and beat them. But there's obviously a gap between where they are right now and where we are, even though I think we've taken some steps forward in the last four to six weeks, we clearly took a step back tonight, but we never lost sight of where we were at, ever.
"...I make no apologies for trying to attack the game rather than just trying to hold up and not get beaten by a big margin.
"Now, we got beaten by a bigger margin because we did that. But we've got to use this as an opportunity to practice against the best teams to bridge the gap to where we want to be."
Following the loss, Essendon drop to 5-4 on the season but own a percentage of just 81.2, the fifth-worst in the competition. Games against Richmond, Brisbane, Carlton and Geelong are to come.
