Essendon Coach Brad Scott Takes a Jab at Rival Clubs Over Injury Concerns
Essendon coach Brad Scott has made a pointed comment about rival clubs complaining about their injury lists, highlighting how tough the Bombers had it in 2025. His remarks came after his team’s close loss to Gold Coast on Saturday afternoon.
The match was a thrilling showdown that went down to the wire, a stark contrast to Round 24’s 95-point defeat to the Suns at the same venue just six months ago.
When asked what had changed most between the Suns clash in August and the one in Round 6, and how far the group had grown, Scott quickly pointed to player availability. “It’s been interesting hearing a few teams talk about having a few players out, well we had 20 out (last year), so cry me a river,” Scott said.
Essendon faced one of the worst injury crises in the game’s history last season, especially with their taller players. With almost half their list unavailable, the Dons failed to win a game between May and the end of the 2025 season, a losing streak they finally broke against Melbourne in Gather Round.
Teams like Adelaide, GWS, Port Adelaide, and the Western Bulldogs have been hit hard by injuries in the early part of this season, but not to the extent the Dons were last year.
Scott then spoke more broadly about the group’s improvement, particularly in the last fortnight. “There’s no doubt about that (our forward progress from last year),” Scott said. “We’re working really hard to bridge the gap between where we are and a dozen teams with their best personnel available who are really high quality teams. We’ve got a lot of work to do, but the last couple of weeks there’s been things that we’ve liked and what we want to look like.”
Despite taking it up to one of the game’s contenders in Gold Coast, Scott hopes his side can take the next step and win games like this in future. “We’re disappointed. We put ourselves in the contest and the game ebbed and flowed and they were able to capitalise on their moments a fraction better than we were,” Scott said. “We, for the large part, executed what we wanted to do, we just couldn’t get it done across the whole game. In terms of the fight in the group, I was pretty pleased with that. We want to quickly progress past that to finish off the job.”
Star defender Jordan Ridley sat out the second half with a calf issue, an alarming sign for him given his long history of soft tissue injuries. Scott admitted they aren’t yet sure if there is any level of damage to the calf. “We’re not sure if there’s any damage there, but he had a tight calf and we have a no risk approach with him. We don’t know,” Scott said.
Essendon will face Collingwood in the traditional Anzac Day blockbuster next Saturday.
