Bombers Begin 2008 With A Bang

Essendon have opened the Matthew Knights era with an impressive 55 point victory over the Kangaroos at the Phone Dome on Monday afternoon in their 2008 AFL Season opener.

Trailing by 27 points two minutes into the second term after Roo forward Nathan Thompson booted his third goal in his comeback match after missing all of 2007 with a knee injury, the Bombers looked like being blown out of the water but from that point on it was all the Bombers with the Roos not managing another goal until the seven minute mark of the third term by which time the Bombers had slammed on nine unanswered goals to take a stranglehold on the match.

The Bombers booted 17 of the last 19 goals of the match and had 11 different goal-kickers compared to the Kangaroos just four.

Skipper Matthew Lloyd finished the day with six goals, with Nathan Lovett-Murray adding four.

The victory was the Bombers first win over the Kangaroos since their famous comeback victory against them in 2001 – when the Bombers came from a record 69 points down in the second term to eventually win by 12 points. Since that match, the Roos had won their past six matches against the Bombers – including all five previous meetings at Telstra Dome.

Knights debut victory however was soured with a knee injury to key forward Scott Lucas late in the first quarter in which he injured his posterior cruciate ligament during a marking contest and is expected to miss 10-12 weeks.

“Not a lot was going right early but we did hang tough until we swung the momentum which was pleasing and once we did that we executed on the scoreboard and we got some good forward entries.” Knights said after the game. “We had a belief we would run the game out strongly and what was good today was our players showed a large degree of flexibility to play in different roles.”

“I think I was still running around myself (as a player at Richmond) the last time we beat them,” Knights added. “I could easily say that with a new coach and a new team that it (the hoodoo) doesn’t matter but the reality is we hadn’t beat the Kangaroos in a long time and it was good to win today under those circumstances.”

Mark McVeigh won the inaugural Archer-Hird as best afield, struck in honour of recently retired Bomber skipper James Hird and Kangaroo Glenn Archer after amassing 32 possessions. Adam Ramanauskas challenged McVeigh for BOG with hard running out of defence, while Jobe Watson (30 possessions), Bachar Houli (26 possessions) and Courtenay Dempsey (20 possessions) were also impressive.

The win sees the Bombers sit 2nd on the AFL ladder after the opening round and a genuine test looms next week as the Bombers take on the reigning AFL Premier Geelong at the same Phone Dome venue.

Posted 24 March 08 in News Match Review