WHILE the weekend's loss to the Bulldogs is disappointing, we just have to remind ourselves that we're still 9-1 and have played some good footy so far this year.

We haven’t played our best footy over the last couple of weeks and are looking forward to the challenge that this week’s game against Essendon brings.

One thing that’s been pleasing about our form this year it’s that we have had a real spread of contributors around the ground, but on the weekend we didn’t have that in our game.

In saying that, the Bulldogs did play very well and we just didn’t hold our own. They beat us in the clearances and also in tackling, an area we pride ourselves which was disappointing but they are areas we can definitely improve on.

We were pleased with the performances of Lance Franklin and Jarryd Roughead. Defensively they worked really hard trying to keep the ball in our area. It only went in our forward 50 35 times, so for them to share nine goals was a good result.

Grant Birchall and Rick Ladson worked hard for most of the day and kept running hard to try and give us some drive from the backline while Jarryd Morton and Josh Kennedy were amongst the action again.

Essendon will be a big challenge this weekend. They had a really good game last week against the Crows and will present a real challenge.

We are hoping we can get a few of our boys back this week with Luke Hodge, Stuart Dew and Cameron Stokes facing tests, and Tim Boyle and Travis Tuck both available for selection.

Last year we bounced back well after a loss and we are hoping we can do the same this week.