Essendon’s senior coach, James Hird, labeled Geelong Cats as the best team in the league, and believes tomorrow’s clash will be an enthralling spectacle.  

Both Hird and the Essendon players are excited for the challenge and see it as a great occasion to play hard football.  

“It is a huge game. It’s a good opportunity for us to play against the best team in the competition for the past six, seven years,” Hird told www.essendonfc.com.au.

“Our players are excited about that.”

This time around the Bombers will be fighting for a very different result to last year, after Tom Hawkins stole the show with five goals and the Cats doubled their score, winning by 67 points at Etihad stadium.   

“They beat us quite convincingly last year, really beat us up around the ball and got away to a very good start,” Hird explained.

“We know we’re in for a big fight.”

Hird believes if the Bombers can play their best brand of footy, which they’ve been doing over the past 6 weeks, that they’ll have a good chance of limiting the Cats play.  

“We want to play well against Geelong, as we do against every other club,” Hird said.

“What they’ve done over the past six, seven years as a football club you have great respect for, and when we run out there tomorrow it’s about playing the best football we can play and restricting them.”