Nick's Collingwood Bulletin Board

An agreement has been reached for 26 Essendon players on the club's list in 2012 to sit out this year's NAB Challenge games with the Bombers still fielding a team in the pre-season competition.

Essendon will field a team with details as to where 'top-up' players are sourced from, including Essendon's VFL team, still to be announced.
AFL General Manager of Football Operations Mark Evans

A statement from the AFL Players' Association is expected to be released by 4pm.

The AFLPA has been at Essendon's Tullamarine base on Friday, attempting to finalise the deal which would ensure that the pre-season series goes ahead.

Union chief executive Paul Marsh told Channel Nine on the way out of the meeting that the Bombers players view the matches as a waste of time, but feel obligated to take part.

The league's football operations boss Mark Evans earlier could not go into the precise details of how James Hird's team will look when they face St Kilda in Morwell on March 7, but hinted that a solution involving the state league players was likely.

"We have taken some time to work with Essendon out of respect for the position the players are in and we've been quite concerned about their wellbeing in all of this," Evans said at AFL House on Friday morning.

"I should say that we're not expecting any changes to the fixture, the match is scheduled to go, and it really is about working how best that can take place.

"We should have a position on that by the end of the day."

The Bombers have around 18 players unavailable for the match due to their provisional suspensions stemming from the ongoing AFL anti-doping tribunal hearing, while a further eight players are planning on sitting out of the pre-season series to protect the identities of the players issued with infraction notices by the league last November.

Evans drew on an example from his time as an administrator at Hawthorn to demonstrate how a top-up system may operate in practice. In 2009, the injury-plagued Hawks used seven players from their VFL affiliate Box Hill's list in a NAB Challenge match against Adelaide in Berri. The Hawthorn side that day contained just one member of the club's 2008 premiership team - Brent Renouf - but did allow Box Hill players Ed Curnow, Sam Gibson, Sam Iles and Lukas Markovic to taste AFL action. All four were later picked up by AFL clubs.

However, there are only 14 players on Essendon's VFL list, meaning the Bombers may still need additional players to field a team in Morwell given that some of the club's non-2012-listed players are unavailable due to injury.

Evans stressed that it was important not to rush the process of finding an outcome.

"We're confident, we have been slowly working with Essendon and the players' sssociation to find the right balance of what we need to do for this NAB Challenge fixture. The Morwell community are excited about the game, they've put a lot into getting the game going and we just need to take our time to work through all the very difficult issues in this."

Essendon chief executive Xavier Campbell said earlier on Friday that he hoped a resolution would "be reached sooner rather than later."

"We will continue to work with the AFL over the NAB Challenge. Our preference is to play."

Dave The Man wrote:So they are all Guilty until Proven Innocent