The Essendon Bombers will have a tough time defending third place on the AFL ladder without captain Jobe Watson over the coming weeks after it was learnt Monday the reigning Brownlow medallist could miss up to eight weeks with a broken collarbone.
Watson is likely to miss anywhere between four and six weeks and his omission will make life hard for what has been a notably resilient Bombers outfit this season.
Essendon’s short term prognosis is as good as a team could hope for after losing its best player. The Watson-less Bombers have been given the attractive reprieve of playing cellar dwellers the Western Bulldogs and Greater Western Sydney over the coming fortnight.
Unfortunately for the Dons the schedule gets a lot tougher thereafter. Premiership favourite Hawthorn looms in Round 18 before tough matches against top eight prospects Collingwood and West Coast await.
Sydney and Fremantle, the two other teams likely to factor into the top four equation, both face a significantly easier schedule with the Tigers, coming off a trashing at the hands of North Melbourne last weekend, looming as the toughest competitor for either side in the next five weeks.
Further compounding the Bombers’ woes was an injury to Brent Stanton. The 27-year-old played out Sunday’s win against Port Adelaide, but requires scans and may miss next weekend’s clash against the Bulldogs.
In better news, Watson could miss just a month of football according to club doctor Bruce Reid.
“They have put some plates and screws across the fracture,” Reid told essendonfc.com.au.
“Being in the middle of his collarbone that is a good spot because you get good purchase with the plates.
“If you have got a normal collarbone fracture where they overlap and you don’t plate them they can be up to 10 weeks but if you can plate them then you get a pretty good heal and they are right in about four to six.”
Premiership contenders usually do not emerge from outside of the league’s top four thanks to the favourable finals schedule, meaning the Bombers’ Premiership hopes lay in the hands of Watson’s teammates. The next month will prove to be a telling sign of how good this team really is.
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