When David Myers went down with a serious shoulder injury early in the season the coaches knew they had a problem. 

Fellow big-bodied midfielder Heath Hocking was still months away from returning. 

It left Jobe Watson with most of the inside ball winning responsibility, but like Myers, he too suffered a serious shoulder injury. 

“We want to be a contested ball team, but our best contested players haven’t played this year,” Interim Senior Coach Matthew Egan told RSN. 

“David Myers, Heath Hocking, Jobe Watson – they’re our big bulls.  

“It’s been a bit hard to win the contested ball this year.” 

In their absence, Dyson Heppell, Zach Merrett and Nick O’Brien have formed the nucleus of the midfield. 

Heppell is the oldest of the trio at 23 years of age. 

With Essendon’s coaching staff realising its young midfield needs greater support, they’ve looked to outnumber the opposition at the stoppages. 

“What we’ve probably done is every time we’re losing the contested ball we’ve thrown a number at the contest which then hurts your forward line,” Egan said. 

“The forward line’s copped a bit of criticism this year, but we’re outnumbered there a lot. 

“On the weekend (against Gold Coast) we just tried to even them up, so that they had confidence to go forward which did seem to help our ball movement.” 

While the move helped against the Suns, it doesn’t mean the coaches will be sticking with the same formula this week. 

“You can’t do that every week because Richmond throw numbers around really well,” Egan said.

‘They’re playing sensational footy so we’ll have to come up with something different this week.”