Chris Henderson’s first season as Essendon’s VWFL Coach has seen the two sides (Championship and Community) once again lock away positions in the finals.

Under the leadership of Henderson and Gary Overliese on the community front, the Bombers are excited by the challenge in front of them, largely willed by one simple question that’s been used as a source of inspiration within the group.

Henderson previews the business end of the season:

The year so far

“It's been a challenging year, I guess.

“Having five new players come into the squad has meant that in a really compressed, eight-week-long season, you almost start off behind the eight ball a little bit, it takes a couple of weeks to get the momentum.

“I think we've seen in the last couple of weeks, we've really started to gel as a group. To knock off Collingwood on the weekend, a team sitting second or third on the ladder, and really play well against them was a sign of our progression over the year.

“For both teams to be now qualified for finals, it's a whole new different ball game now.

Standouts so far

“The first two people I think of are our two captains in Ben Milton (Community) and James Leonard (Championship). There’s been certain points during the year when there's been clutch moments and they've both been able to stand up and accept the responsibility to score or do something that's shifted momentum in a game.

“For me, coming in new to the Club, I reckon some of the players that have impressed me most have been Hayden Farley as a defender in the Championship side and then Jordan Kinniburgh or probably Kaleb Powell from a community perspective.

“You've got other players like Caleb Logan and Scotty Van Gemert who have been around for a long time, very experienced players and really good operators and they're consistently elite.

“Adam Georgelin's been really good as well. He's sort of had a challenging first half of the year and then in the second half he’s had some really big jobs defensively on some of the key monsters in the championship side and has really owned them, which has been great as well.

‘Why not us?’

“It's an exciting opportunity for the Footy Club to see where we end up.

“Some of us, we go into games expecting to win, I think that's been something that, for a lot of the original players, they're a little bit taken aback by some of that, so, they've just got to get used to that concept that we're actually competitive and our best footy is, really, really good against opposition teams.

“Probably three or four weeks ago, I started saying to both groups, ‘why not us?’

“We’re starting to see now, that belief is starting to build individually and then as a collective.

“We're really excited for the opportunity to challenge ourselves and maybe put a bit of fear in those good sides.”