Essendon’s ruthless training regime will be reviewed at the end of this season, but coach James Hird maintains the new program will be modified, not abandoned.
The Bombers have been crippled by a string of injuries which saw them fall away after the midway point of the year, with several blamed on over-training.
They now have to win their final two matches, starting with tomorrow night’s clash against Richmond, to have any chance of making the AFL finals.
Hird emphasised on Thursday that training would be examined but said aspects of it would definitely remain.
“We’re going to sit down and we’re going to go through it … but we’ve done a fair bit right the first half of the year,” Hird said.
“You need to be very careful to overreact and throw everything out.
“There are some things we need to adjust and we will adjust, but we’re not going to throw everything out either because we’ve got guys who have taken their football a long way in the first three quarters of the year.”
Hird insisted that his side would compete tomorrow night and “give a very good effort” despite being crushed by Carlton last Saturday.
“They are a pretty resilient group, this group, they’ve got an amazing captain who’s pretty tough, he will get his players up,” he said.
Hird said that after the Carlton whipping “there was a lot of very flat guys” but said the side had bounced back and trained well on Tuesday.
He said that while the coaches were motivating forces for the side to rebound they could not be expected to take total responsibility.
“Ultimately a player is responsible for how he reacts to a loss and how he gets himself out of that,” he said.