Essendon VFL Captain Nick O’Brien says he was impressed with the performances of the Bombers draftees in the opening VFL match of the season against Sandringham.

Josh Begley, Kobe Mutch and Dylan Clarke made their VFL debuts in the narrow loss to the Zebras.

“I think they’re all really promising young kids, they’re good around the contest and they’ve got real endeavour,” O’Brien said.

“Naturally, after a few games under their belt, they’ll be really good players for the club and hopefully play some senior footy this year.”

The Bombers trailed for most of the game against Sandringham, but rallied after half time before eventually going down by seven points.

O’Brien said a lack of composure and poor skill execution was costly.

“I think the first quarter we were pretty good around the contest but after that they spread a little bit better than us on the outside, and then when we had the ball, they choked us up a little in their defence,” he said.

“We got things right after half time but it was a little too late. Unfortunately when you leave that much work to do, it gets hard at the end of the game.

“It’s disappointing to start the season like that.”

Essendon are back at training this week in preparation for their round two match against Collingwood on Sunday.

O’Brien said the focus at training would be working on playing consistent four quarter footy.

“That was one thing we had to work on throughout the practice games that we did get right,” he said.

“Unfortunately, we fell back into that little bit of a lapse, hopefully next week we can rectify that.”