Essendon hope veteran defender Dustin Fletcher is a powerful motivation as their AFL season dangles on the edge of the precipice.
The Bombers must beat West Coast on Sunday at Etihad Stadium after heavy losses in the last fortnight to Hawthorn and Collingwood.
Fletcher will play his 378th senior game on Sunday, equalling the club games record held by ruckman Simon Madden.
His 379th game will take the 38-year-old to fourth on the overall AFL list.
“Fletch has just been a great player for us – we’ve talked a lot about it this week and spoken a lot about what Fletch means to our club internally,” said coach James Hird.
Midfielder Brent Stanton will also play his 200th game.
Last Sunday’s 79-point loss to Collingwood, their worst result of the season, meant the Bombers dropped out of the top four.
Apart from their on-field woes, Essendon are probably only a couple of days away from learning of the AFL’s verdict on their supplements scandal.
There is speculation the fifth-placed Bombers could lose their premiership points.
Asked if the stress of the looming findings was now affecting his team, coach James Hird said: “we’ll wait and see tomorrow”.
If Essendon are allowed to play in the finals, they have a solid run there.
After the Eagles they face North Melbourne, Carlton and Richmond.
But Hird is confident there will be no repeat of last year’s dramatic collapse, when they lost their last seven games and fell out of the top eight.
There is no way they can miss the finals this time, but Essendon will not want to limp into September.
“We’re definitely a better team than we were last year and the year before,” Hird said.
“We’ve had a couple of weeks where we haven’t played the footy we have wanted to play and come up against really good opposition.
“We’re confident tomorrow we can get our game back on track and … finish off the rest of the year.
“We’ve had a pretty good week on the track – we had a great training session yesterday, the best session we’ve had in probably six or seven weeks.”
West Coast have loaded up for this game, regaining Mark LeCras, Chris Masten and Matt Priddis from injury and also recalling Patrick McGinnity.
The Bombers lost Courtenay Dempsey to a hamstring injury that could end his season.
They regained speedy utility Jason Winderlich from injury and brought back Alwyn Davey, Ben Howlett and Tayte Pears.