McGrath sick of “young and developing” Essendon label, reveals Rutten's reaction after Freo loss
Essendon deputy vice-captain Andrew McGrath has opened up on the difficult week at the Bombers after their disastrous 48-point loss to Fremantle.
Ben Rutten and his troops have been battered from pillar to post in the media across the last week - particularly due to their disastrous second half against the Dockers where they conceded ten goals and kicked just three.
Numerous pieces of vision have since emerged of the Bombers’ lack of effort, particularly through the midfield, and McGrath revealed that was a key factor in their review.
“It has been an interesting week,” he told Sportsday.
“Football can play funny tricks on your mind on weeks like this and things always seem a hell of a lot worse than they are externally.
“No doubt we’ve had a hard week internally, we’ve reviewed our game really hard and reviewed our month of footy really hard and really honestly.
“As a playing group, as a leadership group we’re extremely disappointed with where we’re at right now, by no means is it all bad but there’s a lot of areas in our game right now that aren’t stacking up and not good enough.
“We’re extremely disappointed, we can understand how our fans are feeling as well and are really looking forward to getting back out there and hopefully making amends come Monday.
“We’ve spoken a lot about our discipline as a playing group and just not getting things done at an AFL standard.
“We talked a bit about our tackling, we talked a bit about our work rate, which comes from the way we set the ground up, things that we’ve been working on for a long period of time that we're just not getting done out there, for one reason or another, and this week we’ve kind of put a full stop on any acceptance on any of that and making that an expectation that if you can’t do that, you can’t play.
“We’re really determined to make amends.”
While Essendon’s performance against the Dockers seems to have been the last straw in terms of what supporters can accept, it came after a month of poor footy that has handed the Bombers a 1-4 start.
Just months ago, Essendon were playing in an elimination final after an incredible rise up the ladder in Rutten’s first season in charge.
The embattled coach spoke “from the heart” when grilling his players this week.
“Truck (Rutten) has been really great this week, he was extremely passionate on Wednesday when we had our review and it really came from the heart and hit quite a lot of us between the eyes, which I think we needed and then that followed by the players talking about their experiences and what was happening,” McGrath added.
“I guess it was led by Truck but then pitched in by our leaders, by our playing group, and by the end of it, it was a collective agreement on the things that just weren’t good enough.”
McGrath also said that it was up to the midfield group – of which he is a part of – to “take responsibility” for the on-field happenings, adding they were “taking it personally”.
Meanwhile, the former number one draft pick added his frustrations with Essendon being labelled a “young and developing” side.
The Bombers' charge into an Elimination Final last year was surprising and came off the back of little external expectation, and it was a quick defence of the side when they went downhill this year.
However, McGrath said that’s not an excuse that’s being let fly inside the four walls.
“We’re kind of sick of being labelled a young, developing team, we’ve been that for a long period of time,” he stated.
“You look at our line-up on the weekend and we are quite young, but everyone is an AFL player out there and we’re all capable of performing our game plan and we showed that last year.
“We had a very similar list and put together a really good back end of the season, and we were competitive in just about all of our games and I don’t think the young, inexperienced, developing side is a cop-out at all.
“We’re aware of the reality, we are quite young compared to some of the other teams in the comp, but I don’t think it’s an excuse for how we’ve been playing.”
The recent form of the Bombers has made Monday’s Anzac Day clash with Collingwood an even bigger deal as they look to turn their form around.