Essendon held the Bulldogs goalless for a quarter. Was it reason for hope?

April 6, 2026 — 12:22am

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There was a rare ray of light for Essendon in a positive hour at Marvel Stadium on what initially looked another awful night on Sunday.

Brad Scott’s winless Bombers managed a solitary goal in a calamitous opening two quarters where they trailed the unbeaten Western Bulldogs by 54 points. They seemed headed for a triple-digit hiding after losing to the same opposition by 91 and 93 points in clashes last year.

Instead, Essendon belatedly showed some fight to spare some blushes. But there was some unknown, even confusion, in both camps about what they just saw in a game of wildly contrasting halves.

“It’s obviously disappointing to start the way we did, and you wish that you could come out in the first half, the way we did in the second,” Bombers captain Andy McGrath told this masthead.

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“But when you’re in those situations, you look at guys’ character and see how they respond. I was really proud of the group and how they responded in that second half [because] it would have been easy to succumb to the Bulldogs’ pressure and let them play........

© The Age