Essendon Coach John Worsfold says he was unfazed by Collingwood’s bright start to the match against the Bombers.

The Pies kicked the opening two goals of the game and dominated the possession (62-35) and marks (23-3) throughout that period.

But Worsfold said the weight of possession didn’t translate into dangerous forward 50 entries.

“We knew Collingwood were going to use the ball short – I think maybe seven or eight of their early uncontested marks didn’t really move the ball anywhere,” Worsfold said.

“They went back, sideways and then came back and ended up almost at the same point.

“We weren’t really concerned about that, we don’t really count that as them 'controlling the ball'.

“When they went forward a couple of times too easily early, we addressed that with the players and I thought they got on top of that straight away.”

The Bombers responded with five straight goals after the Pies opening two in the first term.

By half time the margin was 27 points but Collingwood rallied after the break.

An incident that saw Zach Merrett assisted from the field lifted the tension between the two sides and the Magpies stormed back into the match with three goals in six minutes.

But that was where the run ended with the Dons able to steady through goals to Orazio Fantasia and Joe Daniher.

“We’ve done a lot of work both structurally and with our attitude in terms of the way we want to play,” Worsfold said.

“We’ve talked about what the scoreboard says at different stages of the game and our attitude is that we’re challenging ourselves to keep playing the footy we want to play.

“I think they kicked three in a row for the only time in the game at that stage and our attitude was nothing changes in terms of the way we want to play the game.”

The Bombers made one change to the side following last week's loss to Brisbane with David Myers coming in to replace Kyle Langford.

Myers picked up 31 possessions, laid four tackles, had five inside 50s and five clearances against the Pies.

Worsfold said the match committee picked the side based on more than just the performance against the Lions.

“We believe that this group have worked pretty hard this year and they collectively had a pretty poor game last week,” he said.

“It would have been 15 changes if we dropped everyone who underperformed last week.

“The group are working really hard, we were disappointed last week and we wanted to rebound and we wanted to give them that opportunity.”

The Bombers went on to beat Collingwood by 37 points and face St Kilda in their next match on Friday night.