‘Our players deserved the end result’: Scott backs Bombers’ controversial win

Essendon’s three-point victory stirred the Adelaide crowd into raucous booing after a potential free kick in front of goal was overlooked by umpires in the dying seconds.

The Adelaide crowd was livid, claiming Essendon ruckman Sam Draper should have been pinged for holding the ball. The Bombers big man was laying on the ground, on top of the ball, 20m from Adelaide’s goal.

Had it been awarded against Draper, Taylor Walker was the tackler and would have taken the kick. The Adelaide players were jumping up and down, appealing for the umpire to blow their whistle in their favour. Instead, time was called on the game.

Seven commentator Luke Hodge says it was a free kick. “It looked like he was laying down, going to sleep,” Hodge said.

Fox Footy’s Garry Lyon agreed: “It looked like he fell on it, and dragged it in. He just looks like he had that massive frame cradling that ball and not letting anyone at it.”

“On any part of the field, at any time of the game, that is a free-kick,” Nathan Buckley said.

Seven’s Matthew Richardson was not as convinced. He said the ball was dragged back under Draper by the Crows tackler.

As the Essendon players jumped for joy at the siren, the Adelaide crowd erupted with boos.

Essendon are now 4-2 heading into the Anzac Day game against Collingwood. The Crows have sunk to 1-5, and their season is almost shot.

Brad Scott: I thought were right on top, in the first half in particular. But we couldn’t really gap them as much as we obviously would have liked to with, with some ascendancy in certain parts of the ground. But on the flip side, they came out after half-time to kick four goals in a row, and put a bit of a gap on us. That momentum can be hard to arrest away from home, when the Crows have got their tails up. I thought it was a really good game of footy. I thought the Crows held up their end of the bargain and so did we, and it went down to the wire and could have gone either way. But I’m pretty comfortable saying that our players deserved the end result.

Question: What did you put your inside 50 dominance down to, and why you couldn’t make more of it?

Scott: Well, it’s a bit of a double-edged sword. I mean, we probably had a lot of inside 50s because we weren’t scoring from them. So it was coming back out. But we were pleased we’re able to hold up our system to get the ball back in. But, our forward structure was an area of concern for most of the night. We didn’t nail it in the way that we would have liked. The Crows got numbers back really well. And, you know, we had to adjust things at each break in terms of the way we went inside 50. I think we ended up with 62 inside 50s for the night. Now that’s a pretty good number. That’s going to give you a really good chance of getting a result each week.

Question: What were your thoughts on the Draper call at the end of the game?

Scott: Yeah, I mean, I haven’t looked at a replay. There were masses of numbers around the ball. There were a lot of decisions on holding the ball for and against throughout the night. We will obviously focus on the one in the last couple of seconds. But I can show you a couple of others too if you like.

Essendon’s three-point victory stirred the Adelaide crowd into raucous booing after a potential free kick in front of goal was overlooked by umpires in the dying seconds.

The Adelaide crowd was livid, claiming Essendon ruckman Sam Draper should have been pinged for holding the ball. The Bombers big man was laying on the ground, on top of the ball, 20m from Adelaide’s goal.

Had it been awarded against Draper, Taylor Walker was the tackler and would have taken the kick. The Adelaide players were jumping up and down, appealing for the umpire to blow their whistle in their favour. Instead, time was called on the game.

Seven commentator Luke Hodge says it was a free kick. “It looked like he was laying down, going to sleep,” Hodge said.

Fox Footy’s Garry Lyon agreed: “It looked like he fell on it, and dragged it in. He just looks like he had that massive frame cradling that ball and not letting anyone at it.”

“On any part of the field, at any time of the game, that is a free-kick,” Nathan Buckley said.

Seven’s Matthew Richardson was not as convinced. He said the ball was dragged back under Draper by the Crows tackler.

As the Essendon players jumped for joy at the siren, the Adelaide crowd erupted with boos.

Essendon are now 4-2 heading into the Anzac Day game against Collingwood. The Crows have sunk to 1-5, and their season is almost shot.

A Josh Rachele snap misses the goals. He lands a point. They are three points down. Ten seconds to go