WITH their captain and best forward target, Bonnie Toogood ruled out for the next six-to-eight weeks with a knee injury, the Bombers had to find other avenues to goal.

Ahead of their clash on Saturday against the Eagles, they suffered another blow with Georgia Gee ruled out late with a calf complaint.

Enter debutant Chloe Adams, who paired with second-gamer Emily Gough in an impressive display, getting on the end of work up the field from experienced trio Madison Prespakis, Georgia Nanscawen and Maddison Gay.

Prespakis had 27 disposals, the most on the ground, along with three marks, three tackles and three clearances. Another aspect of her game was the ability to keep going about her work while having Jess Hosking tasked with limiting her effect on the contest.

Nansacawen had 25 touches with five tackles and six clearances (the most of all the Bombers), while Gay had seven marks alongside 24 disposals.

Gough debuted last round against Fremantle after being picked up with pick 20, while Adams was selected in the same draft last year with pick 38.

Speaking after the game, Essendon head coach Natalie Wood was full of plaudits for the young forward pair who stood up without the presence of the Dons’ influential skipper.

“You are always looking for opportunities for people to work harder or work with more intent and I think that’s something with our group that they do pretty well most of the time,” Wood explained.

“When you lose an integral leader and focal point up forward, I think all that did with our group was [make them] get really busy and [make them] really hungry for other people to find opportunities to fill that void and I thought we did that well today.

“I thought we were able to isolate their defenders pretty well [and had players that benefited like] Jacqui Vogt [and] Emily Gough [who] is playing her second game of football and I thought her presence up forward was excellent.

“Chloe Adams was debuting today and was able to hit the scoreboard as well too, so it’s a really pleasing thing for us to have such young players up in the forwardline that are providing ways to present for us.”

Wood described how the team planned to improve their forward half game, which started with locking the ball in and being more effective with their inside 50s.

“I thought that we’ve improved our ability to get the ball forward [and] I think that we are taking some strides in terms of being able to lock it in the front-half more, and then finding ways to sort of hit the scoreboard and be damaging,” she said.

“We had a few different players going through the forwardline and that gave us some different looks as we’ve got a couple of players out.

“I thought our forwards were fantastic, and all bring something quite unique and were able to work and gel together and stay connected which I guess put us in the position to get some different avenues to goal.”

Coming off a loss at home to Fremantle, the Bombers are a young group with many of their experienced campaigners in Gee, Toogood and Brown out with injury. Wood reflected on what grinding out that win felt like away from home against formidable opposition.

“I thought it was a great battle, coming over to Perth it’s a really great opportunity, we are still a young group [with] a lot of new players, so it’s a great opportunity to travel,” Wood continued.

“[I’m] really proud that we got off to that strong start, I think that really set up the game for us but we knew that the Eagles would fight back and I thought they were terrific at the start of the third quarter.

“It just probably showed a bit of growth from our group in terms of being able to work through some of that pressure within the quarter, [it] has previously taken us a little bit of time to adjust so I thought our in quarter adjustment in the third quarter was good.

“We can still learn to adjust and done some things quickly, but I thought the Eagles did a terrific job of shutting down our corridor ball movement and they were forcing a lot of turnovers which was putting us on the back foot.

“I thought we fought back pretty well and just really happy for the group to get the win.”