Is this Essendon’s worst team ever?

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Opinion

Failure fatigue: Is this the worst Essendon side ever?

Michael GleesonSports columnist

March 29, 2026 — 4:16pm

March 29, 2026 — 4:16pm

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In 2016 Essendon gathered a band of second-string, old and speculative players, patching together a team to get through a season.

This 2026 team could be worse.

The Bombers are about to lose more consecutive games than that makeshift bunch subbed in to cover for the players suspended over the doping saga. One team was built out of necessity; the other by choice.

This might, on some measures – such as that crazy old thing, winning games of football – be the worst team Essendon has fielded in their 154-year history, although that really is an impossible comparison across eras. Is it worse than the team of 1933 that finished bottom of a 12-team competition, winning just one game? Probably not. Though in 1933, the depression was a different type of salary cap.

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The fact this 2026 team is even in the conversation of being as bad is perhaps more telling.

Take just the AFL era, which began in 1990. Essendon won two flags, played in two other grand finals and missed the finals in just three of the first 12 years of the new national competition.

In the 25 years since, they have played finals eight times for (does it need repeating?) no finals win in the past 21 years. Only the teams of 2015, in James Hird’s brief and ill-fated second coming as coach, and the patched-up team of 2016, were this conspicuously bad.

Wondering how poor Essendon are in the scheme of things will sound surprising to a generation under the age of 21 who don’t remember a time when Essendon were good, but for the rest of the football world who remember Essendon only as a phenomenally successful and feared club it is an enduring mystery that the club could have reached this point.

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Essendon have already lost 16 consecutive games across two seasons. Is it fair to consider losing streaks across seasons? Why not, when the coaching and administration is the same and the club only brought in more young draftees?

They next play the Western Bulldogs, a side that beat them by a combined 184 points last year. Losing, as they will next week, draws them level with their worst losing streak.

Beyond that, they have matches against Melbourne in Gather Round, the top-of-the-ladder Gold Coast in Queensland, Collingwood on Anzac Day, last year’s premiers the Brisbane Lions, GWS and Fremantle before returning to the site of their most recent win a year earlier in the Dreamtime game against Richmond.

They will fancy their chance against Melbourne and dream longingly of Dreamtimes past.

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It is a dream that would prompt a psychologist to draft a new chapter for Freud’s Interpretation of Dreams. In fact, it might prompt Essendon to draft Freud, as long as he is slow and can’t defend.

A psychologist admittedly might be too preoccupied discussing Essendon results with the club’s board and coaching staff, like a type of Rorschach test.

“What do you see when you look at this?”

“A bright future.”

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The ink blots might point to a bright future, but not anytime soon. The Dons knew this when they committed under the current regime to a draft-led rebirth. And they were not wrong to do so; the question is if they were right in what they did after making that decision.

There are multiple complications with Essendon’s latest road map to recovery.

Firstly, they are saddled with the mistakes of the past and so faith in any Essendon administration to finally get it right is low.

Secondly, each iteration of the administration and coaching staff has battled internal fights for a decade while simultaneously trying to project an image of unity. Ironically, those who have been most critical and agitated the loudest for change were the architects of the situation they now find themselves in.

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Thirdly, draftees need time, and Essendon are tired of waiting.

Finally, we come to the worst point of all: resignation. Essendon fans have failure fatigue. They have heard it all before, bought into it all before and each time been let down. Now it is all just words until they see something on the field.

They might well win again in the Dreamtime game, but it won’t alter the fact Richmond’s rebuild is further advanced than Essendon’s. It is galling for a club that has tasted no success for decades to see a team that won three flags since 2017 bottom out and come back up and go past them. Ditto 2018 premiers West Coast.

Essendon have turned their list over and tried to get into the draft with first-round picks (the Zach Merrett trade is another matter we are not going to trawl over again here), but none of those draft picks has yet been at the very earliest part of the draft to deliver them a Sam Lalor, Harley Reid or Willem Duursma that they might build a team around.

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Michael Gleeson is an award-winning senior sports writer specialising in AFL and athletics.Connect via X or email.

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