Undermanned Bombers Head North

Essendon will blood a new breed of Baby Bombers in their Round 1 NAB Cup clash against Brisbane at Carrara Stadium this Saturday night.

The Bombers will go into the match missing 11 “first choice” players including captain Matthew Lloyd, Scott Lucas and Dustin Fletcher.

Andrew Welsh, Brent Stanton, Mark McVeigh, Andrew Lovett, Jobe Watson, Alwyn Davey and Adam Ramanauskas have also all been ruled out of the match but new Bomber coach Matthew Knights said he expected to have nearly a full list to pick from by the start of the AFL Premiership season.

“We’ll take a young side up to the Gold Coast and realistically, there are probably 11 of our top 25 players at this stage who won’t be playing, each for specific reasons,” Knights said.

“I’m genuinely excited for those younger players who’ve done a lot of work in the past one or two pre-seasons, and a lot of those young men will be getting opportunities to play, which is fantastic.

“It’s just wonderful for players like Danny Chartres, Leroy Jetta, Andrew Lee and Sam Lonergan, all players who’ve put in the hard work and will get to play in prominent positions.”

The Team
B:	Pears	Michael	Michael
HB:	Myers	Ryder	Lovett-Murray
C:	Hocking	Johnson	Monfries
HF:	McPhee	Gumbleton	Dempsey
F:	Jetta	Johns	Houli
R:	Hille	Dyson	Peverill
INT:	Atkinson	Dick	Chartres
	Hooker	Laycock	Lonergan
	Magin	Nash	Reimers

Brisbane Team
Albert Proud, Travis Johnstone, Scott Harding, Luke Power, Jed Adcock, Tim Notting, Justin Sherman, Lachlan Henderson, Jared Brennan, Anthony Corrie, Tom Collier, Matthew Leuenberger, Joel Patfull, Wayde Mills, Troy Selwood, Robert Copeland, James Polkinghorne, Cheynee Stiller, Rhan Hooper, Bradd Dalziell, Matt Austin, Haydn Kiel, Josh Drummond, Phillip Smith, Scott Clouston, Nigel Lappin, Daniel Dzufer, Joel Tippett

Posted 14 February 08 in Match Preview News