Regardless of result, Essendon’s football department is keeping every game review as diligent as possible.

According to GM – Football, Daniel McPherson, a solid week of education laid the groundwork for the Bombers to produce arguably their finest performance of the year to date against the Bulldogs on Friday night.

With more than 50,000 fans on hand to see the Dons’ 29-point win, McPherson was thrilled to see the execution of that education from the playing group on a big stage, especially in rebounding from a big loss the week prior.

“It’s awesome. Particularly off the back of last week, it was really important for us to get back out here and put our best foot forward,” McPherson said.

“We like to think our weeks are fairly consistent regardless of the result of the previous weekend, the review was really thorough and obviously it had to be off the back of the Port Adelaide game.

“We didn’t train a whole heap (during the week), the length of the main session wasn’t that big given that we were playing Friday night again, so the education out of the Port Adelaide game was really important.

“Friday night footy in front of a packed house at Marvel Stadium, there’s no better time and place to do it. We’re really proud of the way the boys delivered.

A key facet to the Bombers’ win was gaining control in the midfield, with Sam Durham and Jye Caldwell owning the challenge of facing the Dogs’ talent at stoppages in the absence of teammate Archie Perkins.

Identifying early in the week that the Dons’ clearance game needed to be bolstered, the vigilance of midfield coaches Brent Stanton and Daniel Giansiracusa stood out to McPherson.

“I think that’s one of the strengths of the coaching group, they’re really level in the way they approach each week, it’s very process driven,” McPherson said.

“A couple of the things we’d been doing really well in the first three games in the centre bounce (and) stoppage let us down fairly significantly (against Port), so we went to work with that stuff, ‘Gia’ and ‘Stants’ did an enormous job with the guys and the result showed.”

“(It was really important for us) to be able to do it on the big stage in front of a big crowd against a really good team who has been playing pretty good footy.

“It was always going to be a big task with Marcus Bontempelli, Adam Treloar and Tom Liberatore in there. For our guys to go head-to-head with them and get the ball going our way more often than not was a terrific performance.”

Ahead of the ball, the versatility of Sam Draper and Todd Goldstein to impact when resting forward was a highlight for the Bombers, as well as the tenacity of smalls such as Alwyn Davey Jnr (a team-high 22 pressure acts on the night).

McPherson is hoping the performance can set a strong baseline for the side to follow over the course of the season.

“The result would suggest we’re happy to play like that every week, but I think it always starts around the contest,” McPherson said.

“We had some good targets ahead of the footy, Draper was really good, Goldstein when he was there, Harry Jones and Kyle Langford both terrific in the air.

“We’ve got a lot of young players still, and not many of them would’ve played in games like this under that much pressure.

“Our little fellas put a lot of forward pressure on, which enabled us to create more scoring opportunities.”

Set for their third consecutive Friday night game against the Crows this week, the Dons have been careful in managing their short turnarounds, looking to maximise their limited time on the track.

Ahead of their second trip to Adelaide in the space of three weeks, McPherson is keeping things as consistent and familiar to the players as possible.

“As boring as it sounds, it’ll look very similar to last week,” McPherson said.

“The beauty of playing on a Friday night is the guys get a bit of fresh air to themselves over the weekend. They’ll come in Monday morning, train again on Tuesday and head over to Adelaide on Thursday to rip into the Crows on Friday night.”