Essendon will be looking to turnaround a 78 point defeat when it meets Geelong in the VFL Elimination Final on Saturday.

The Cats swept aside the Bombers in their last meeting but Matthew Egan’s men are hitting form at the right time.

The Dons have won their last three games including Saturday’s 74 point win against Northern Blues.

“I’m pretty confident that we are building every week and now we are happy for the players that they get an opportunity to play in a final,” Egan said.

“It’s against a real quality team in Geelong that will show us exactly where we’re at.”

Essendon entered the finals in similar form last season and made it all the way to the Preliminary Final.

This year the team needed to defeat the Blues just to qualify for the finals. 

With their season on the line, the Bombers trailed at quarter time and were tied with the Blues on 42 points apiece at the main interval.

Egan said the nerves of Bomber faithful at Windy Hill didn’t find their way into the coaches box.

“We weren’t actually (nervous),” he said.

“They came out and played pretty well, we thought we were competitive but needed to improve a few areas with our ball movement and giving up some easy goals.

“We were pretty confident that if we fixed the things that we spoke about at some stage that we would open the game up.

“We were rapt that the boys didn’t panic; they listened to the instructions and implemented them really well in the second half.”

The Bombers kicked away in second half with 13 goals to three on their way to a 73-point win.

Egan said the Bombers tweaked a few things which helped break the Blues resistance.

“We changed a few things that we felt were letting us down and tidied up our ball movement which helped us score a bit more,” he said.

“Defensively I thought we were pretty strong and when you defend well you often score off the back of that. I think we won inside 50’s by 22 in the second half so that shows the type of footy we are looking to try and get going.”

The Bombers will take on Geelong on Saturday, September 3 at North Port Oval from 2.40pm. The game will be broadcast live on Channel 7.