The team will be without many of its senior players. James Hird (broken rib), Scott Lucas (hamstring), Sean Wellman (hamstring), Dean Rioli (hamstring), Aaron Henneman (lacerated kidney), Damian Cupido (knee) and Joel Reynolds (ankle) are all definite exclusions.
""Hird and Lucas were our best and fairest winners last year, so they are hard to replace immediately, but the team did pretty well when they weren’t out there. So it was a good effort,"" Sheedy said.
""He (Hird) was a bit unlucky. It was only a simple mark in a contest and he has just been unfortunate,"" he said. ""I am not sure how many games he has missed, but it would be 80 or 90, which is a third of his career. He just keeps copping it.""
Despite Essendon’s poor opening half against Richmond, Sheedy was pleased with the fightback the Bombers showed after half-time. He praised the efforts of some of the younger players and said a number of senior players found a bit of form.
""We gave an opportunity to five or six younger players to get another league game under their belt. From that point of view, they need every bit of experience that they can. Some of these players are nearly getting towards double figure games.
""Lovett-Murray actually presents himself better and better each time he plays,"" Sheedy said. ""Kepler Bradley and Ted Richards have played well in our reserves all year. They have been just waiting for an opportunity, but there just hasn’t been many injured tall players until the last week or two.""
Sheedy said that Dustin Fletcher is likely to come back into the side this Friday night after serving a one-week suspension. The master coach hinted that Sam Hunt and veteran Mark Mercuri could also be included in the team. ""We will consider Hunt and in my opinion Mercuri is an outside chance to play.
""Mark Bolton could play. There was great debate over whether he would play on Saturday before the game and we decided not to play him. He is probably 70 / 30 at the moment,"" he said.
