With 12 games down and 10 remaining to complete the home and season for 2001, we thought it might be a good time to have a quick chat with Kevin Sheedy about how the Bombers are travelling at this stage of the season. We fired a few quick questions at Sheeds to find out his thoughts on the season to date, the performance of the young players and Essendon's performances in key matches.

How do you feel the season has gone so far?
""I like to play each other once and find out where we are all positioned. Whoever we play in round 10 to round 15 we’ll know whether they’ve improved, (and know about) their new players. New players come on the scene all of sudden and you get taken by storm so I’m probably a bit loathe to say too much for this time of the year. But you know, we’re on top with a good percentage – it’s not a bad position.
And we’ve blooded some new players and are really developing a group of players that have played a handful of games last year.

Have you been impressed with the youngsters?
I think all the players that have been played and are coming through have shown different periods of aggression. It’s been pleasing for them themselves, because it gives them a bit of confidence in the big league. You can sit and play in the VFL for ages and never know if you’re going anywhere until you are really put up there.""

Does having such a successful side give you more opportunity to blood younger players?
Yes, but they still have to come out and play well. From that point of view, it’s good to be able to come into a side that has good players in it. Helps them make better decisions and gives them leadership at the same time.

How has the team changed from this time last year?
We’ve probably played lots of different new players in the side. From the point of view that there was no Darren Bewick or Sean Denham, or Michael Prior, Mark Fraser, Peter Berbakov. So we’ve lost a fair bit of experience out of the club. With the players that have been out injured, we’ve been in a good position to find out how good our list is – because we’ve been forced to play them (the youngsters). So instead of dropping people, which can be a bit awkward, not only awkward because someone’s playing poorly, but this way we are actually forced to make decisions that we’ve have wanted to know. Injuries have made us make the decision, which in many cases has been fortunate.
It’s been great to see kids come off the rookie list and play well. Four of them –Mark Johnson, Dean Rioli, Damien Peverill and Cory McGrath – they’ve all come off the rookie list in the last year or two and played well. We’re really working hard outside of the draft, outside of the national draft, the rookie draft. And that’s been a bonus for us, picking up the leftovers.

Were you surprise by how big a blow-out the Hawthorn game was?
I think Hawthorn had a lot more injuries than most people knew about. And when you lose Chick and Crawford on top of the ones you have already lost - I’m not taking too much out of that Hawthorn game other than the four points.