Write the Bombers off at your own peril – that is the message from senior coach Kevin Sheedy. Sheedy believes Essendon is in good shape up forward and down back and is backing his young and exciting midfield to do the job in 2005 – an area where some have questioned the club’s ability to match it with the more powerful sides in the competition.

""If we can get our midfield right we will be in good shape. We worked hard on that last year without a great deal of success but we have drafted midfielders in the last two or three years and we will end up with a very good, exciting young midfield,"" Sheedy confidently predicted.

""The likes of Stanton, Dyson, Winderlich and Reynolds can really give us something. They have only been around a short time but I will back our boys in.""

""If you put Laycock and Lucas down forward with Lloyd, Rioli and Hird you have one spot left and other players need to fight out for that.

""We don’t want to move our backline around much and if we can slot a Bradley in at centre half back between an Andrew Welsh – who has been a terrific young player for us - and a McPhee along with Solomon, Fletcher and Mark Johnson, we have a very good backline to go with a pretty good forward line.""

Sheedy believes that with a solid pre-season now behind them, Essendon’s younger players are ready to help the side take a significant step forward in 2005.

""We have got room six or seven youngsters in this side and if we do that and get it right then we will have a very exciting team,"" he said.

""I would like to see (Jason) Laycock and (Kepler) Bradley slot in to our goal-to-goal line and we saw that in the intra-club match we played last week.

""I we always put some young players in the midfield against our senior players whenever the opportunity presents itself. We played our best six young players on our best six experienced players – it is a good way of learning and if they work their backsides off to beat those players we will get a magnificent competitiveness.""