There was always going to be some short-term pain for the Bombers as they injected youth into a side building for the future. And despite today's thumping at the hands of Sydney, coach Matthew Knights felt a number of the young players had been the highlight on an otherwise bleak day for Essendon.

Knights threw his young side around, even playing second gamers David Myers and Darcy Daniher on Sydney star Adam Goodes at different stages of the game.
 
“Some young players, Tom Hislop, David Myers and Darcy Daniher, I thought they handled themselves well, Kyle Reimers too. I thought our young guys were our shining lights in a lot of ways,” Knights told the media post-match.
 
 
Ultimately in was Sydney's bigger bodies that were the difference in the second half, particularly around stoppages.

“You can’t underestimate how important it is to hold your position in those stoppages and to at least break even,” he said. “I think for 40-50 minutes of football there in the middle we matched Sydney and that was a positive.

“The spirit in the last week and a half of training was good and with about 10-minutes left in the third quarter we were only about 12-points down against a very good side on their home turf.

“Unfortunately a few of our midfielders - guys like McVeigh, Winderlich and Lonergan - were coming back from injury and got a little fatigued as the day went on and the Sydney midfield were able to continue with the same speed and intensity and I think that really told late in the game.

“What we have been speaking about is holding our standards for longer in regards to hard-ball-gets and loose-ball-gets and tackling. I think our younger bodies started to fall off Sydney half-way through the third quarter and once you fall of them they get their handballs out and start to score heavily.

“Our tackling really disintegrated in the third quarter. It’s quite easy to see the correlation between when you are alright around the stoppages and the score-line and when we were very ordinary around stoppages later in the game.

“They got a run on and they took some risks and things went right for them and the last 40 minutes was very ordinary.”

Knights said he was confident the team will improve.

“When you consider the guys we had come back today and Scott Lucas is on the horizon for us now and McPhee and Lovett-Murray coming back from suspension so I would have thought we would improve,” he said.

“I need to have a talk to Scott and see when he is at and decide if he is going to come back via the seniors or Bendigo because he hasn’t played a lot of football.”