Captain Jobe Watson says the vindicated Essendon players are champing at the bit to take on Sydney on Saturday.

Up to 18 Bombers have been forced to sit out the pre-season while serving provisional suspensions due to the supplements scandal.

The bans were lifted on Tuesday when an AFL anti-doping tribunal found they had no case to answer, freeing them up to play against last year’s runners-up at ANZ Stadium.

“I got hit a few times by my teammates (at training) the other day and they were real punches, so I know they’re getting angry,” Watson said.

“They don’t want to play against each other anymore. They’re ready to play someone else.”

Watson said the controversy had placed enormous pressure and stress on the playing group.

But he said the 34 current and former Essendon players found not guilty by the AFL Anti-Doping Tribunal always knew they had done nothing wrong and had nothing to hide.

“We feel today’s decision handed down by the AFL tribunal fully supports the players’ belief that they are innocent,” he told reporters on Tuesday.

“We want to go to bed at night and not have it the last thing we think of and the first thing we think of when we wake up.

“We want to be able to play this game that we loved playing when we were kids and we want our supporters to be proud of us.”

Watson said the players had bonded over the controversy and coped with the stress and uncertainty of the past 26 months as best as anyone could.

Watson said the players had been “open books” and honest throughout the whole process.

“I think the players and anyone involved feels if when you go to your employer and they can’t tell you exactly what went on, that’s concerning.

“I think the players are well within their right to have had anger over a period of time, to be concerned about that.”

The players watched via videolink the tribunal say it was not comfortably satisfied any player violated the anti-doping code, but the wording meant it took a few moments to sink in. Then came hugs and cheering.

Watson said he hadn’t thought about compensation or the talk that his 2012 Brownlow Medal could have been taken away if the players had been found guilty.

“For all of us, what we believed was that we weren’t guilty and that we would exhaust every avenue possible to prove that.”