Assistant coach Matthew Egan is looking forward to working alongside experienced duo Mark Harvey and Mark Neeld throughout the 2015 season.

The pair joined Essendon’s coaching panel during the off-season after senior assistant coach Simon Goodwin deflected to Melbourne.

Egan has been with the Bombers for three seasons, looking after the forward line for two seasons before switching to defence last season.

“I think it is really exciting as we have gone from a young and pretty inexperienced coaching group to a pretty experienced group,” Egan said.

“Neeldy has had some good experiences with Collingwood, Melbourne and I actually played under him in 2004 at St Joeys in the Geelong Football League.

“He has been coaching for a long time and has a lot of experience to add to our group.

“Mark Harvey speaks for himself with three premierships at Essendon, really good knowledge coaching his own team.”

Egan said the club’s coaching panel would benefit from the added experience just as much as the playing group would.

“I am excited to learn as I am a pretty young coach myself so if I can get that I will be happy,” he said.

“The players will get huge amounts of learning off these guys so that is a really good result for the club.”

Egan is looking forward to once again working with the club’s defensive group including new addition James Gwilt.

The former St Kilda defender joined Essendon as an unrestricted free agent in the recent free agency period.

“It is exciting as James is another good player to our group and the more players like that we can add to our team the better,” Egan said.

“He is obviously a good ball user, he can play tall and small which I really like, players that have got good flexibility.”

“It is just another quality player that we can hopefully get him up and about playing some good footy which would be a good sign.”