Essendon will fight like their lives depend on it as they attempt to keep their fading AFL finals dream alive, says coach Brad Scott.
As former captain Dyson Heppell announced his pending retirement, without a finals win to his name across a 252-game, 14-season career, the Bombers turned their focus to attempting to salvage his last season.
After slipping to a one-point loss to Gold Coast, the 10th-placed Bombers sit two points outside the eight and need to pull off upset wins over Sydney and Brisbane, then have other results go their way, to make finals.
When asked if he would tap into the significance of both games being effectively elimination finals, Scott said: "It sort of goes without saying and I don't need to alert anyone to that fact. I think we're all crystal clear.
"We've just got to go out and fight like our life depends on it and that's the attitude that we take into these last two games, and the results will fall where they fall.
"Some of them are not in our control, but we're in control of our attitude going into these two games, and I've got a highly-motivated, somewhat frustrated, but highly-motivated and determined playing group that are determined to have a crack at two of the best teams in the competition over the next two weeks.
"And in a way, it'll give us a pretty good audit of where we sit, because we are where we are, for a reason. Now, we play two of the best teams, so we'll certainly find out over the next two weeks."
The Bombers have slipped from top-four contenders to outside the top eight in a matter of weeks.
"We've, in my opinion, made big steps forward this year in terms of the way we play, but we still see a gap between us and the best, and we've got two weeks to try and close that gap," Scott said.
"If I just thought we were miles off it it'd be 'okay, we've got a lot of work to do, and we've got to knuckle down and go to work.' A big part of the frustration is you can see it's really close.
"We're just not quite clicking to where we need to be and that's on all of us.
"We haven't been unlucky - we just haven't been able to execute in crucial moments like we would have liked."
Heppell will hang up his boots at the end of the Bombers' season.
"I’ve been wrestling with the decision for a number of weeks and it’s a decision that certainly hasn’t come lightly or been an easy one but one that I’m super content with,” Heppell said in a club statement.
Heppell isn't guaranteed a farewell game but could come into the mix with defender Nik Cox (concussion to miss)
"He'll keep training and preparing at an elite level like he always has, and he'll be ready if we pick him in our best team," Scott said.
"But he's really clear that we pick our best team to win these next two games."
With Jordan Ridley still sidelined, forward-turned-defender Sam Weideman could be in the mix for his first game of the year, with untested key back Lewis Hayes another option.
