Essendon coach James Hird says the AFL club won’t be backing off their tough training regimen next season despite this year’s horror injury run and late-season nose-dive.

The Bombers slumped from an 11-4 record to end the season on a seven-game losing streak, culminating in Saturday night’s 14.20 (104) to 10.12 (72) loss to Collingwood.

Essendon chairman David Evans said before the game “disappointing” was the only word to describe the season and an investigation had been launched into their conditioning program.

But Hird said there would be no letting up and while the club’s 2011 season started tailing off after round eight, in his first year at the helm, the fact the downturn occurred later this season was a sign of progress.

“We won’t be backing off,” Hird told reporters.

“We understand we’ve made some mistakes and that might be pushing them too hard.

“But we’re pretty confident that we’re going down a path that will create players that can last out a season and finals.

“Last year we got to eight weeks, this year we got to 14 weeks, next year we (might) get to round 18, so hopefully we just change a few things and get a bit further.”

Hird said any group of players he coached had to be able to cope with tough physical demands, even if that took years to develop.

“There’s no point coaching them if they can’t physically do it,” Hird said.

“So I’m going to keep pushing our players physically, so that whether it’s in two years, three years, next year, they can compete for the whole year.”

Earlier, Evans said the club would work hard to discover where they went wrong.

“This year has really been a disappointing one for the Essendon Football Club and there’s no other word for it,” he told a club function.

“We played some sensational football in the first half of the year and it promised so much.

“There’s no doubt that we’ve made mistakes when we’ve been conditioning our players and there is a thorough investigation going on now as to how and why that happened.”