Essendon assistant coach, Alan Richardson, said his side will learn a lot from today’s tussle with the undefeated St Kilda despite falling an agonising 19 points short.

“I think it showed that there is massive potential for our side, but it showed how much we have to make the most of opportunities when we play against teams like that. When you get opportunities you have to capitalise and we certainly didn’t do that today,” Richardson said.

“We had a lot of chances in front of goal and St Kilda obviously missed some shots as well but I think that is something that we need to learn as a group.”

Richardson lauded the individual performance of Andrew Lovett who left St Kilda’s defence running circles as he danced through the corridor.

“He was fantastic and I thought he had a great game,” he said.

“St Kilda have been sensational in terms of tackle pressure and applied pressure on every team they play and Lovett’s ability to get through that and then execute was just absolutely outstanding.”

It was a tough task again this week for emerging defenders Cale Hooker and Tayte Pears as they looked to negate Saints’ spearheads Nick Riewoldt and Justin Koschitzke.

“I think they did really well. I think their work off the ball to stop their forwards leading and their work in the contest was really solid,” Richardson said.

“They will learn a lot from those efforts and I think Courtenay Dempsey will also learn a lot from playing back there too.

“There were some good individual performances today and as a team I thought we played pretty well after the first break but we didn’t get the chocolates and that is what we are here for.”

Richardson said today’s performance against a top side of the competition will allow the Bombers to maintain their confidence heading into the Dreamtime at the ‘G blockbuster against Richmond next week.

“I think the boys will still get a fair bit of belief out of today,” he said.

“We can match it with the best when our effort is there.

“Our boys should be pretty confident that when we play at our best we can beat any side irrespective of where they are on the ladder.”