John Worsfold has labelled inexperience and the inability to cope with finals pressure as the main contributor into Essendon's 55-point loss to the West Coast Eagles on Thursday night.
The Bombers found it tough all game and were never really in the contest, being thoroughly outplayed and outclassed by the reigning premiers.
Worsfold said he was "flat" about the loss, but had no hesitations in highlighting the inexperience of the Bombers in the game.
"We had a lot of players playing their first final tonight," Worsfold said.
"We learn we're a bit short of that mark and that pressure of finals footy."
The Bombers were soundly beaten, losing the contested battle 138-116, but just as badly, butchered the ball way too much for their liking, giving up a miserable 10 intercept marks in the first quarter alone.
Worsfold credited the Eagles' pressure and said that the contrast in talent was fairly obvious.
He said continuity would be the key to the Bombers' ability to compete with the league's best and make that next step towards further finals success.
"When you finish eighth, there's often a big gap to those teams that are fourth or fifth, and we saw that," Worsfold said.
"West Coast could have easily finished in the top two.
"I'm sure they're still highly touted as one of the flag favourites this year, and we finished eighth.
"It's highly unlikely they're ever going to. They finish eighth because of experience and form over the course of 23 rounds.
"We're not at that level yet to be in that top group.
"That's what we're aiming to keep growing.
"We were relatively inexperienced team tonight, that'd be fair to say."
Worsfold was proud of his team's efforts nonetheless, particularly with Dyson Heppell and Michael Hurley who overcome injury clouds to play in the game. Andrew McGrath and Adam Saad were also strongly praised.
"We'll keep building a group that's going to grow in experience and play more footy together and we'll become a strong group," he said.
