There is no Joe Daniher,but Cale Hooker has rediscovered some of his best football up forward and Peter Wright,a late withdrawal on Saturday night,gives them an alternative.

There has been no Sam Draper,either,but Andrew Phillips,the very definition of a journeyman footballer,is the reliable,ready-to-play replacement. In critical moments he broke even with or beat West Coast’s biggest threat,Nic Naitanui.

The Bombers embraced a reality that they might have been 29 points down but they had also kicked as inaccurately as the Eagles had accurately. The scoreboard didn’t reflect the flow of play in the game.

Essendon has embraced the reality that Ben Rutten is their coach and this is his game plan - this istheir game plan - and there are no mixed messages or blurred lines of leadership.

Now this is undoubtedly the new era. The Bombers are embracing the idea that they are completely unburdened of what went before.

Rutten has impressively connected the young players to what the club stands for,with older players,players from before the peptide period,speaking with the young crop and reinforcing that this is a great and historic club. It had a poor period,but it is a great club.

The injection of young players is the reason for the excitement and a cause for hope. But Harry Jones,Nik Cox and Archie Perkins are not the reasons they are winning games of footy now. At least,not in the sense that Anthony McDonald-Tipungwuti and Jake Stringer arethe reasons they won on Saturday night.

The older players are playing better with the excitement the young players provide. The older players look like they are enthused at the pace with which change is coming at their club. Where they might have looked for a trade,wondering if time would run out for them to taste success at Essendon,now they can see it is turning quickly.

Coleman-Jones takes his chance

Richmond found a forward line out of desperation when they won the first flag of this era in 2017. With no talls it became Jack and the smalls. This year’s necessity (Tom Lynch out) has created the opportunity they have been searching for to create an opening (it has taken two years between games) to get a longer look at Callum Coleman-Jones. They will like what they see.

The Tigers will,of course,go for Lynch when he is fit again but these are valuable games they are getting into the young key forward. Four goals in his second game and three marks inside 50 is a good return,but more importantly he presented for the ball like a forward and looks like a player now ready to play at the level and keep his spot.

Coleman-Jones was taken with pick 20 in the 2017 draft,and is proving after two games that the Tigers do a lot right. There are clubs that would like their first round picks in that draft again.

The unwatchables

If people weren’t suffering enough in ‘Lockdown 4.0’,they had to endure the horrible,turgid,almost unwatchable display of Collingwood-Geelong.

It was perplexing,again,to hear the Collingwood coach say afterwards that the team was playing a better brand of football. The brand that delivered one goal in three quarters was a brand to challenge even the true believers. Yes,they were inaccurate but the slow,sideways ball movement and adventureless play was excruciating to watch.

The Magpies’ late flurry of goals was in some ways irrelevant because they came in junk time. In another way,they suggested that - as with last week against Port Adelaide - only once the game was lost and had to be won did the team find some urgency.

Some distance,please

While we’re talking lockdown,infection spread and social distancing,how stupid did it look to have everyone concertinaed into one little lower deck section of the Giants’ stadium for Richmond versus Adelaide,while vast swathes of the ground were empty? Yes it’s in a different state,but the need to keep a bit of distance still holds.