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SHEEDY: MELBOURNE BACK TO ITS BEST
Essendon and Melbourne play each other for the first time at Colonial Stadium this Friday night in a crunch match for both sides. The 2000 Grand Final sides are both sitting on seven wins at the moment and aiming to stay in touch with the top four with a win. With Melbourne running into some recent form, Bomber coach Kevin Sheedy is expecting a tough encounter and said Melbourne probably has its best side in since the 2000 Grand Final. ""It is two years later, so they have a fair bit of experience and hunger so we have to be absolutely at our best this week,"" Sheedy said.
Essendon and Melbourne play each other for the first time at Colonial Stadium this Friday night in a crunch match for both sides. The 2000 Grand Final sides are both sitting on seven wins at the moment and aiming to stay in touch with the top four with a win. With Melbourne running into some recent form, Bomber coach Kevin Sheedy is expecting a tough encounter and said Melbourne probably has its best side in since the 2000 Grand Final. ""It is two years later, so they have a fair bit of experience and hunger so we have to be absolutely at our best this week. I watched the video of the Melbourne game against Adelaide and I went and saw them play on the Monday against Collingwood. Melbourne have been really building up to their best footy which was a pretty good win - they probably had their best side in apart from Nicholson and one of the McDonald boys. Neale (Daniher) has the Melbourne boys tuned in for sure,"" Sheedy said.
Q. How do you rate the Demons at the moment - you probably don't know what you are going to get? A. Their form was terrific against Adelaide from a point of view of aggression at the ball and the game against Collingwood and the game against Adelaide were just so different. When you know the capacity of a team and the way they played against Adelaide on the weekend - you know what their strengths are. They are in the eight and they have won as many games as we have - so it is nip and tuck now from both clubs point of view. We all have hard runs and we probably have one of the hardest, if not the hardest run home.
Q. Do you see any advantage at this stage of having 14 days off and they have had six? A. Well we probably have evened it out by playing half our team in the seconds. I will be prone to critisicm for that on the weekend. From my point of view it was good for our players to have a rest but they probably had a rest coming up to their last match and they were pretty good.
Paul Salmon, Dean Rioli and Gary Moorcroft are likely to return for the Bombers this Friday night in the crunch match against Melbourne. Salmon missed the match against Hawthorn due to achilles soreness, Rioli has missed the past three senior games due to suspension and Moorcroft was a late withdrawal for the Round 12 clash with the flu. Injured mid-fielder Joe Misiti is still three to four weeks away with the wrist injury he sustained in Round 7 against Carlton. ""Misiti will be the last player to come back. It is amazing when Whitnall falls on you what damage you can do,"" Bomber coach Kevin Sheedy said. The full transcript of Sheedy's press conference from training follows.
