Essendon’s newest coaching recruit Ben Rutten says the opportunity to work under senior coach John Worsfold was a significant factor in drawing him to The Hangar.

Rutten arrived at the club this month after spending four successful years at Richmond and the assistant coach said he had a number of reasons to venture to Essendon.

“It’s a club that’s got great history and some really good people are here,” Rutten said on Friday.

“(I have) the opportunity to learn under another great, successful coach in Woosha and just to challenge myself as well, get myself into a different environment and be able to learn from different people.”

Rutten’s role will include overseeing the entire team’s defensive output, while continuing to develop the side’s strong brigade of key-position players.  

“I’m going to be looking after the team’s defence and also going to be spending some time with the key-position players – not only the defenders, but also the forwards as well – and hopefully get some growth out of them,” he said.

“Mark Harvey’s still going to be working with the defenders, but I’ll be looking at the team’s overall defence starting from the full-forward line right through to the last line of our defence.”

Rutten played 229 games as a key defender for Adelaide from 2003 to 2014 before joining the coaching ranks at the Tigers and he says despite a number of rule changes coming into effect next year, the team will stick to the basics this pre-season.

“A lot of the fundamental stuff hasn’t changed for 100 years, let alone the last few years.

“So we will be, especially at this time of year, building our season based on fundamentals and based on the basics of the game, and then making sure that we’re well prepared towards the end of the pre-season.”

While the younger members of the squad and a handful of older players have only just returned to the track this week, Rutten’s eye has already been taken by a number of promising Bombers.

“(I’ve been impressed by) some of the players that really excelled towards the end of last year (such as) Aaron Francis,” Rutten said.

“Andy McGrath is looking like he’s in good shape. (Brandon) Zerk-Thatcher is one of the key-position players that I’ll spend some time with.

“They’ve been pretty impressive, but to be honest, the whole group has come back in really good shape and seem in a good head space.”

The rest of the team will be back at The Hangar to kick off their pre-season on Monday.