Dejected Essendon players leave the MCG after last Saturday’s thrashing against Adelaide. Photo: GETTY IMAGES

The football world has often described Essendon being neither good enough to challenge for a flag nor bad enough to completely bottom out as a form of purgatory. But that may no longer be appropriate.

Why not? Because Webster’s dictionary defines purgatory literally as “a place or state of temporary suffering or misery”. And entering a 25th flagless year, Essendon’s haplessness now seems permanent. Certainly, a state unlikely to change any time soon.

That’s been driven home to an increasingly restless fan base by Saturday’s insipid performance at the MCG against Adelaide, the Bombers mentally clocking off in just the second game of a new season a week after a decent (yet still losing) effort against Hawthorn.

The script may change slightly with Essendon in terms of the timing of its absolute best and worst, but the bottom line is always the same. Not good enough. Not nearly skilled enough. Not nearly tough enough for nearly long enough, either physically or psychologically.

But even that may not be the worst part for Bomber fans. It’s probably more painful still watching rivals like Hawthorn go down the ladder then up again and past Essendon. Maybe the likes of Gold Coast, Adelaide, even a resurgent North Melbourne, are now set to do similarly while the Dons languish in entrenched mediocrity.

The Adelaide thrashing exposed all Essendon’s woes again. Skipper Zach Merrett playing a lone leadership hand. Experienced so-called leaders like Andy McGrath, Mason Redman and Dylan Shiel making poor decisions, butchering the ball, or both. Again. A palpable lack of cohesion and organisation from a defence as loose as AFL football has seen in recent times.

The absence of even just one man, Jordan Ridley, rendering that backline rudderless, and up forward a similar absence of Kyle Langford leaving the attack bereft.

If that doesn’t offer enough insight into a chronic lack of either star quality or depth, consider the number of players Essendon is currently using in positions other than those they were recruited to play or in which they made their name. Like Shiel playing as a half-back. A ruckman in Sam Draper playing as a key forward. A key forward in Harry Jones playing as a wingman.

It may be harsh to single him out, but Jones, who a good portion of the fan base is still hoping forlornly may turn into a substantial AFL player, is a good example of how far standards at the club have slipped.
Why is Jones playing on a wing? Because in his sixth season in the AFL system, he still can’t be relied upon to consistently take a mark or kick a goal. Like most of Essendon’s younger players (though Jones is now 24), he’s had lengthy spells on the injured list. But after 54 games, his career averages are one goal, nine disposals and four marks per game.

That’s so palpably short of the benchmark set for players of similar experience at the good clubs it’s laughable. But contemporary Essendon has no previous benchmark of its own in a comparable era worth using (apart, of course, from Merrett, the man once voted out of the leadership group by his peers because he was too demanding for them).

Jones was pick No. 30 in the 2019 draft. Chad Warner was pick No. 39. Yes, you can always play that game with isolated examples and draw perhaps unfair comparisons, but what about when it happens again and again and again?

Essendon had six first-round draft picks from 2020 onwards playing against the Crows. There’s plenty of hope around the most recent pair – Isaac Kako and Nate Caddy. And the rest?

Whether injuries have cruelled them or otherwise, both Zach Reid and Nic Cox (in their fifth seasons) are looking increasingly like “busts”. And Archie Perkins, Ben Hobbs and Elijah Tsatas have done little yet (indeed Perkins across five seasons and 82 games) to give any indication they are anything more than workhorses, a long way from potential matchwinners.

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The shortfalls of Essendon’s recruiting and list management under the guise of the now-departed Adrian Dodoro and his continued occupation of those roles for nigh on three decades despite the palpable lack of success, are still a source of wonder outside the club.

But those inside (then and now) know that they are in no small part due to the insidious politicking and relationship-building which came to really define Essendon once it stopped achieving on-field success. Where else would a key football staffer with as average a record as Dodoro had have kept his job for as long as he did?

It was never just about Dodoro, of course. But also the lack of investment in development which helped stifle those choices he did get right. Just as it hasn’t ever been just about the coaches, Sheedy, Knights, Hird, Thompson, Worsfold and Rutten. And no, Bomber fans, nor is it now just about Brad Scott.

They’ve all been stymied also by the wrong appointments to run their football departments, or fitness and conditioning departments which have never been able to stem the flow of soft-tissue injuries nor expedite the recovery from them. And of course, now, a very vanilla-flavoured senior list chronically lacking class.

All of which has enabled virtually anyone at Essendon under performance pressure to point the finger elsewhere in desperate attempts to muddy the waters of responsibility and shore up their own power bases.

And just how much that resultant equivocation and procrastination about actually getting off their arses and fixing the mess has damaged not just the immediate term but the future, is now becoming achingly apparent.

So when Essendon supporters ask in ever more exasperated tones: “Why are we constantly so ordinary when the Hawthorns, Crows or Kangaroos can zoom past us on the developmental path?” this is what they need to understand.

Essendon is a club still reeling from a series of poor decisions in almost every facet of its administration for a long, long time. And perversely, it continues to prosper commercially probably only because of the loyalty of a very large support base that it has served so badly it’s fortunate they all haven’t walked away.

Much of this has been documented time and again over the last five years. But really, you can trace the disasters back even as far as stuffing up the salary cap and dismantling a premiership side post-2000. That’s a quarter-of-a-century ago.

There’s the cowering to the egos of club greats past and present. not to mention officials, board members and patrons who have used their positions as launching pads for their own business interests, personal agendas or both.

There’s the supplements saga, of course. An over-correction in favour of “player power” which followed it and has produced seemingly a whole generation of overly-entitled and far-too-easily satisfied Essendon players who continually talk a big game but seldom deliver it with anything like consistency.

There’s been, until recent times, a revolving door of football staff, a callous disregard on occasion for people who have been the fabric of the club in its heyday, a disregard for history and disconnect from fans whom it pays only lip service to considering.

All these things chip away at the fabric of a football club. All of them, bit by bit, lead to the sort of repeat non-performance Essendon served up on Saturday.

And when the one thing which can expedite the healing process the most, on-field success, seems further away than ever, it’s a short and fatal step to the perpetual irrelevance many older Bomber fans fear they are seeing the beginnings of now.

Essendon is running out of time to start getting it right. Take it from one older supporter who sat in the crowd on Saturday and saw just how sick of it the supporters are. And that is a message of which a host of current coaches, players and Bomber officials really need to take on board every bit as much as the lessons of another morale-sapping defeat.

This article first appeared at ESPN.