The fateful chain of events that killed off another Bombers season without a finals victory were in motion long before Mac Andrew realised a boyhood dream with a towering pack mark and goal after the siren.
When Brad Scott completes the review into Essendon’s doomsday defeat, he will be hit by an inescapable truth: his senior players let him down.
Even the most fatalistic of Bombers fans could not have envisaged their night at the footy ending in such traumatic fashion - with their club’s season shot, the one-point loss ending Gold Coast’s comical run of 16 losses on the road. Cruelly, Jade Gresham was denied the goal they could not miss by a correctly paid free kick for a push on Connor Budarick, which would have sealed the game.
Holding on for dear life, the Bombers did plenty right again. They set the field up as they had trained. At each of the five stoppages in the last 90 seconds, their midfielders stuck to their opponents like limpets. They had two to three extra men behind the ball, clogging up enough space to force the Suns into dirty possessions.
They got more right at the final stoppage, winning the clearance through Stringer, whose handball found Jye Caldwell. Under heavy pressure, he scrambled a dribbling kick out to the defensive side of the wing. But neither thought to get an arm across Andrew, allowing the Suns forward an unimpeded run and jump to mark the Sherrin.
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