Essendon GM of football Josh Mahoney says the Bombers’ main focus at the end of the 2022 season will be targeting the free agency market.
The club surpassed all expectations when playing in an Elimination Final last year, but have fallen below what many had hoped for this season. Mahoney, who was appointed to the role in 2020, said the club not knowing it's standing in the competition was a concern when he started at Essendon.
“That was probably the first comment I made when I was going through the process to join Essendon is, ‘I don’t know where we’re at as a club’,” Mahoney told AFL Nation.
“You want to get to a stage where all your members and supporters, a decision gets made and they just nod their head and say, ‘I can see why we’ve made that decision', that just shows that everyone believes in the path you’re on.
“So last year was a lot about just getting a good assessment on our list, we had some players changes, some mature players leave and then we had some good draft picks, so it was about finding out about our list.”
The Bombers have been open about the fact they wanted to largely avoid last year’s trade period, only recruiting former Crows Jake Kelly through free agency.
However, that’s not the approach they’ll take this year.
“Apart from that (Kelly) we weren’t active, just backing in our list, and we’re in a position now where we’ve got a good handle on the position we’re at and we’re in a good position to attack the trade period, (to) look at adding some players to our list,” Mahoney continued.
“We aren’t playing anywhere near where we think we can play, but you do go through these little periods, and it’s not a real assessment of where we’re at as a list currently, but we’re hoping in the back half of the year when we get five or six players back that are in our best 22, we’ll get a better handle on that.”
Currently 16th on the ladder following their dismal 2-9 start to the season, the Bombers hold pick three in the 2022 National Draft.
When asked whether they’ll be looking at trading high picks, Mahoney suggested that wasn’t part of the plan.
Essendon also hopes a fast finish to the season will mean they don’t have the third overall pick.
“No, not at this stage (will we be trading high picks),” Mahoney said.
“I think it’ll mainly be looking at the free agency market, that’s a big one for us at the moment, we’re in some conversations there.
“And then we’re looking at trading other picks. I think at the moment, the pick that we’ve currently got is such a valuable pick, so we’re looking at different scenarios, but hopefully we’re not having Pick 3 at the end of the year.”
Essendon currently trails Carlton by 24 points at half-time of their Round 13 clash, looking for their first win since Round 8.