Essendon entered Gather Round having not lost at centre clearance in their opening three matches of 2024.
Brad Scott’s Bombers had beaten Hawthorn 18-9, Sydney 16-15 and St Kilda 13-7 in that statistic, resulting in two victories and a loss to kick off the campaign.
However, their centre bounce ascendancy came to a grinding halt on Saturday night when Port Adelaide put the Dons to the sword, dominating centre clearances 19-6 in a 69-point result at the Adelaide Oval.
Port’s Jason Horne-Francis racked up seven centre clearances himself, one more than the Bombers, while Connor Rozee had four, ruckman Ivan Soldo three, and Willem Drew and Zak Butters two each. Meanwhile, six Essendon players could only muster one centre clearance apiece.
That stat line prompted Luke Hodge to comment on the deficiencies of the Bombers on the night, rating their centre bounce performance a zero out of 10.
“Zero. It was hard to watch,” said Hodge on SEN’s Sportsday.
“Only because of what Essendon was able to do leading into the game. Over the first part of the season, they were the number one centre bounce team. Of 18 teams, they were the best going into the games (on the weekend).
“You were sitting there going, ‘this is going to be a really interesting game’. You’ve got the three-pronged attack of Rozee, Butters and Horne-Francis, you’ve got the double ruckmen Sam Draper and Todd Goldstein versus Soldo. You’re thinking, ‘well, this is going to be entertaining, who is going to win the battle?’.
“But Horne-Francis had more centre bounce clearances than Essendon by himself.”
Hodge couldn’t understand why the Essendon players continued to make it so easy for Horne-Francis and co. to keep walking the ball out of the middle.
“Time and time again he (Horne-Francis) was bursting from the stoppage, no pressure on him, coming out the front,” he added.
“At what stage do the Essendon midfielders, who were so good for the previous four games, go, ‘hang on why don’t we have a sweeper there?’
“It’s 360 degrees from where the ruckmen are, the ball could go any way, and there’s only three players in there so there’s going to be areas that you can’t cover. I understand that. But let the areas that you can’t cover be your attacking side, not your defensive side.
“Don’t follow people through. Cover a certain area just for a couple so they don’t come bursting out the front. For four quarters they continued to let it go.
“I thought Soldo was outstanding battling against Goldstein and Draper. Horne-Francis had seven clearances, Rozee had four, and the six blokes for Essendon had one each.”
Again the buzz word surrounding the Dons was thrown up - the ‘Essendon edge’.
While Hodge admits it might have now been taken out of context from what coach Scott initially said, he did suggest that the Bombers players could have made life much tougher for their Power opponents.
“I know we’ve spoken about the ‘Essendon edge’ and people have taken it a bit far from what Brad Scott was saying, but if you’ve got one ruckman versus two, make his life hell,” he continued.
“I don’t think I saw one Essendon player run past Soldo, hit him, bump him. Look what Sydney did to Max Gawn in Opening Round. Gawn had the worst game he’s had in years because Sydney took it away from him.
“I did not see one Essendon player do that against Soldo. The Essendon edge? There was no edge there.”
Hodge concluded: “That’s all we’re asking, just make it hard for the opposition.
“So whenever they come up against you next time, they’re thinking, ‘oh s--t, I don’t want to play against them again because they made my night hell’.”
While the Dons were badly beaten around the ball on Saturday night, they can take solace in the fact that in the three games prior they were one of the best centre clearances team in the competition.
It gets no easier though as they meet the Western Bulldogs at Marvel Stadium on Friday night after Tom Liberatore (five) and Marcus Bontempelli (four) combined for nine centre clearances against Geelong last weekend.