Essendon and Hawthorn had some memorable duels in the mid 1980’s including some heated battles. The trend continued at the MCG today, with no love lost between the two teams. A brawl erupted early in the third quarter and involved 30 players. Assistant coach Mark Harvey praised the efforts of the Bombers who were physically challenged and responded as a consequence.

The Bombers piled on seven goals after the third quarter scuffle to push their lead out to an un-catchable 74-points. ""The players got challenged physically and our blokes handled it quite well I thought,"" Harvey said immediately after the game.

""To run away with the game by such a big margin was a credit to them because they haven’t been doing that. They had to put up with a lot of media coverage this week about Hawthorn throughout the course of the week and I thought they put them away, the way we would expect them to.""

Essendon’s 74-pint victory over Hawthorn is its biggest winning margin of the season. ""It is a really good sign of spirit and how you handle certain parts of the game. We put it together really well and it is a credit to the way they conducted themselves,"" he said.

Harvey was pleased with the forward-line set-up today. Thirteen players contributed on the scoreboard, but it was Matthew Lloyd (seven goals) and Scott Lucas (three goals) that stole the show. Both had Hawthorn defenders rotated between them in a bid to stop their influence on the game.

""Matthew and Scott were two key forwards that really did well. They took a lot of marks and kicked a number of goals between them. They were very potent to our scoreboard,"" Harvey said.

In other news – Jason Winderlich and Joe Misiti both left the field in the third term with concussion and took no further part in the game. David Hille (calf) was a late withdrawal from the match and was replaced in the selected side by Winderlich.