THE FIRST ever AFLW Dreamtime match in Darwin came to a spectacular end, with Essendon and Richmond unable to be split at the final siren.

Both teams had their moments of dominance throughout the match, but ultimately had to settle for the draw.

Reflecting on things post match, Essendon coach Nat Wood had mixed emotions.

“First and foremost, I thought it was a great game. I thought both teams played a really terrific brand of football. Both teams had some momentum at different times,” Wood said.

“It’s probably bittersweet, but yeah, happy with the whole occasion. And we’d love to have capitalised on the fourth absolutely, but really happy, particularly with some of our last line defence, saving even like goals being, points being rushed through. I thought that the group set up really well.”

It was tough conditions up in Darwin, but despite that Essendon was still able to move the ball well and play a kick mark game.

“It’s probably a tale of two ways there,” Wood explained.

“I think our clearance metres gained were really high and Richmond’s turnover metre, so both teams are playing in a slightly different manner, and both teams got some good moments from different times.”

On the other side of the equation, Richmond coach Ryan Ferguson was also able to find some positives out of his side’s performance.

“The things we can take out of the game, some amazing efforts individually as a group to rebound in that last quarter and sort of start to overwhelm them and to come from behind and get a result,” Ferguson said.  

“Not the result, but a result was huge. Obviously, we’ve got to get better. There’s areas in our game we’ve got to build on, but a very cool, very cool four days. Thought it was a really massive, huge spectacle. I know I’m proud of both teams and the spectacle that we put on the work that we did in the lead up.”

Ferguson agreed that Richmond’s ability to reign in Essendon’s uncontested mark numbers helped changed the game and swing momentum in its favour.

“Uncontested marks in the first half, I think they maybe had 60 and in the last quarter we showed with a mindset what we can do with taking those out,” Ferguson said.

“So I thought that was sloppy on our part, really good by them because they were finding them, they were creating them.

“But I thought we were sloppy in that regard and it did change the game when we took it out. So there’s one of our theorists from this game. We’ve got to be sharp with that side of things.”