Hoo, boy.

At the 18 minute mark of the final quarter on Friday night, Essendon were second, after a crafty Jade Gresham snap put them 15 points up on Adelaide.

It summed up the last quarter to that point: the Crows, having surrended a 36-point lead from midway through the second quarter in the face of a Bomber blitzkrieg, had their challenges in the final term repeatedly stymied by a Dons team that, while flawed, seemed destined to hold their nerve. Indeed, so confident was I that they’d hold on from there, that the battered and bruised Crows, who’d lost two key defenders and Jordan Dawson to injury, had fired their last shot.

Foolish.

Within seconds of that Gresham goal, the Crows had surged the ball inside 50 out of the centre square, as had been their way in a barnstorming nine-goal second quarter that by the final term felt distant enough to have been from another match, and after a chain of handballs, Darcy Fogarty snapped truly to reduce the margin back to nine.

What followed was a little over five minutes of Bomber mistakes. Some big, some small, some inconsequential, some pivotal. All of them stacking up one on top of the other like upgrades from a US-based cybersecurity company that eventually combined to take down the Dons like Microsoft earlier in the afternoon.

Only time will tell whether Essendon’s season, too, just got hit with the blue screen of death.

The first of these blunders, and without question the ugliest, comes with 4 minutes and 32 seconds on the clock. After the Dons have twice repelled Adelaide ventures inside 50 with a pair of intercepts, a long ball down the line towards half-forward from Sam Draper comes off hands, is gathered at ground level by Jye Menzie, and quickly finds its way out the back to where Nate Caddy, so impressive so early in his young career, has snuck goalside of opponent Mark Keane.

Menzie’s handball isn’t perfect, wobbling over Caddy’s head, but it allows the rangy youngster to run onto the ball, all the while putting further distance between himself and Keane. When he gathers, he’s 30 metres out, an open goal in front of him, and the Crow five metres behind and gaining no ground.

He runs to 25, steadies with all the time in the world… and for reasons known only to himself, goes for a running banana.

It’s an incredible decision to make; number one, given he was running directly at the goals, any checkside kick physically had to be executed while off-balance; for another, if he’d wanted to avoid that, he could easily have ducked inboard for a step or two, opened up the angle, and executed it far better.

As it stands, a kick that should have by all rights been the game-sealing goal slews wildly off the side of the boot – of course it was, because he kicked it with the side of the boot – and out of bounds on the full. He’s somehow not scored.

It’s not the first miss the Bombers have had in the last quarter, nor even the worst – Sam Draper hitting the post from 10 metres out to begin the term takes the cake in that regard. But I’d be surprised if it didn’t result in Caddy losing quite a bit of sleep over the next week or so.

The Bombers get out of jail a bit: the Crows muff up their exit outside 50 along the boundary, and the result is a throw-in. But you could tell from the moment the ball left the boundary umpire’s hand that they were in strife.

A few minutes earlier, the Crows’ bench flashed their players an ‘=’ sign; easy to interpret, their task was to not let the Bombers stack a single spare man behind the ball, a standard modus operandi for most teams when holding a late lead.

Not that the Dons seemed to try too hard to manufacture one; in this case, they’ve flooded numbers to where the fall of the ball should be, but it’s the Crows who have a free man ahead in the centre square. Worse still, those numbers at the contest are out the back, designed to prevent Adelaide from chaining up handballs from the stoppage should they win it: a sound idea in theory, but one that gives the Crows two free midfielders right at the ruckmen’s feet, and free reign to bang it on the boot and not have to worry about a loose behind the ball.

That’s exactly how it plays out: Reilly O’Brien taps down to Jake Soligo, who with Bombers all around him, throws it on the boot. It’s smothered, but it spills to O’Brien, who repeats the dose and hacks the ball off the ground all of 25 metres… and straight to Brodie Smith, who has spread forward from that contest and marked just ahead of a closing Kyle Langford.

Note that as Smith marks, 12 Bombers and 12 Crows are in the frame. That makes it a six-on-six ahead of the ball, and Smith has both Rory Laird close by for a handball receive, free of any opponent, and Lachie Sholl coming up on the boundary side. It has all the makings of an overlap run that can take Adelaide to the teeth of goal.

Smith stuffs it up a little bit, running on himself instead of handballing straight to Laird and shepherding; but nevertheless, when he eventually gives to the No.29, who in turn gives to Ben Keays, his opponent Sam Durham having been drawn in to try and stop them, the Crows are still away.

But the Bombers dodge a bullet: with two Crows inside 50 to kick to and five options ahead of him, all of them are running back towards goal as hard as they can, meaning their Bombers opponents only need to follow them. A single lead up at Keays, had it been honoured, would have resulted in a near-certain set shot.

Instead, Keays, with no other option, goes as long as he can; Jordan Ridey spoils Brayden Cook, the ball lands in dispute, and running onto the boundary on his non-preferred foot, Riley Thilthorpe’s supremely ambitious snap misses everything.

Three minutes and 42 seconds remain. The Bombers, vulnerable all night in transition play, having conceded two kick-out goals in the second term alone, are barely clinging on, for all the safety a nine-point lead at this stage of the game affords them.

From the back pocket, Ridley does his job, thumping the ball long and down the line where it’s knocked over for a boundary throw-in. Yet again, the Bombers err in their set-up: it’s entirely man on man at the stoppage, with the Crows allowed a five-man forward line with no loose men in red and black behind the footy.

When you consider how damaging the Crows have been from stoppage all night, and just how freely both teams have scored, it seems madness: unsurprisingly, Keays, who has lost all touch from his nominal opponent, Nic Martin, barges through the stoppage, wins the footy at bull-at-a-gate pace, bursts into space, and fires the ball inside 50 again.

It’s disaster waiting to happen, and against a forward line as talented as the Crows’, one-on-one looks will eventually bring you unstuck. From the high ball, Ben McKay forces a draw with Thilthorpe, but Fogarty’s strength tells on Jayden Laverde, breaking away from him in tight quarters with three lightning steps, wheeling around just as Laverde reaches him for a tackle, with his snap bouncing in an unguarded goalsquare and through.

It’s a goal entirely of the Bombers’ own doing. Had they had a spare man at the stoppage, Keays would have been less likely to break free; had they put a spare man behind the ball, it’s unlikely it would have remained close enough for Fogarty to pounce as he did. And if all that still happened, had a single extra Bomber been on hand to drop back into the square for exactly the sort of quick snap towards goal that Fogarty has just pulled off – the sort of thing Blake Acres does on a weekly basis at Carlton – that crucial major is snuffed out.

But no: the Bombers have let themselves be played man-on-man, and for a team still trying to be more than the sum of its parts, that’s a position they cannot afford to be in.

Three minutes and 17 seconds remain. It is now on with a capital O.

The Bombers win the crucial centre bounce, but Keays again has a crucial hand: as Sam Durham, the Bombers’ best all night, attempts to explode away from the stoppage and drive the ball long and deep inside 50, the five-goal Crow clings on desperately. It’s enough to force Durham to kick in a hurry, and lose much of the momentum of his run in swinging his body quickly towards goal rather than to the side; and the result is a ball that flies over Martin and into the hands of the intercepting Max Michalanney.

Bafflingly, with so little time on the clock, neither of Brad Scott’s two giraffe-sized wingmen in Harrison Jones and Nik Cox, men you’d have thought perfect to push back and be spares in defence to add extra presence in the air behind the ball, have not only started on the wing true rather than back at its most defensive point, but have actually followed Durham’s kick forwards.

As a result, when the Crows intercept and look to hit the gas straight away, there is open space in front of Luke Nankervis as he receives from Michalanney and bounds away.

Nankervis’ kick finds young Hugh Bond, and as Channel Seven’s camera pans out again, it becomes clear that the Dons’ defence is in disarray. Jones has sprinted back as far as he can but won’t make it to where the next kick inside 50 is going in time, and Cox, running on the wing near where Bond has marked, chooses to guard that wing instead and force Bond to kick instead of giving to a free nearby teammate.

Most bizarrely of all, Keays, the most dominant man on the field, he of five goals and incalculable impact, is on his own, 45 metres out, directly in front, screaming for the ball. And no Bomber seems to realise he’s there, or make any sort of move to close him up.

Bond doesn’t see him either, and instead goes long and to the pocket, where it’s four Crows on four Bombers. And once again, the visitors prevail in an even-numbers contest: McKay spoils, but in doing so loses his balance and falls to ground, taking himself out of the equation and giving the Crows, in effect, an extra man.

The loose ball arrives with Lachie Murphy, who quickly handballs through to Thilthorpe, McKay’s opponent who snuck out the back having trailed the Bomber to the ball.

Once again, though, Thilthorpe stuffs up: with more time than he realises, and Keays still free and screaming for a simple handpass five metres away from which he can almost walk it in, the big Crow snaps from the pocket on his non-preferred left, and misses badly.

At least Jones has this time ensured the Bombers had representation in their defensive goalsquare; still, the number of bullets they’ve dodged is now getting into Keanu Reeves territory.

Two minutes and 52 seconds remain. The Crows are rampant, the Bombers clinging on: but have they wasted their best chances?

The next mistake comes from the kick-in: as Andrew McGrath takes it, Sam Draper, the biggest Bomber out there, is next to O’Brien on the non-broadcast side wing.

So what does McGrath do? Why, kick it to the other wing, of course! The one with open space enough that it’s effectively a one-on-one when the ball falls, with Bombers and Crows alike milling aimlessly all around the Dons’ defensive 50 and with not a hint of structure in sight.

The logical move, at this stage of the game, is to get your ruckman, and as many numbers as you can, to one half-back flank/wing area, and then have McGrath boot it as long and as close to the line as he can. If Draper can mark, brilliant, but if not, force the ball out of bounds for a throw in, stack a number or two behind the ball and cram the rest in at the coalface, and begin killing as much time as possible.

McGrath’s kick is, of course, marked by Michalanney on Menzie, and wasting no time, he drives the Crows into attack again. It’s another golden chance spurned: Thilthorpe gets good hands to the ball ahead of Ridley, but clangs a very gettable mark, and the Bombers just about lock it up after nine seconds of the ball spilling hair-raisingly loose.

That’s three little errors from Thilthorpe in these final five minutes, but at least he, unlike the Bombers, has the excuse of having not played a full match for premiership points in months.

As the Bombers hack a quick kick out for another ball-up, this time on the wing, at least now Scott has had the sense to put Langford behind the ball; a luxury that instantly pays for itself when the next long ball inside 50, from Billy Dowling this time, is marked by him instead of spilling free like the last half-dozen when it was an even-numbered contest.

Still, better late than never, and as the clock ticks below two minutes left, the game is still very much in Essendon’s keeping.

The problem is that in this entire five-minute ordeal, the Bombers have just kept losing one-on-one contests. Langford’s kick is pretty much perfect – it’s long, wide and close enough to the boundary line to be spoiled over; yet Draper and O’Brien are the only ones who fly for it, and the big Crow comprehensively outcompetes his counterpart to land another intercept mark.

It’s yet another sign of a team not planning well enough for this exact contingency: few players, not even Draper, seemed to have any idea where Langford was about to kick, even though it should have been obvious.

Again, as O’Brien goes back, the Bombers have allowed themselves to be equalised ahead of the ball: it’s seven on seven inside the Crows’ 50, and really, only five can have any influence on the kick that’s about to come.

Glaringly, too, Brodie Smith is free and calling for the ball right on 50: his opponent is some 20 metres back and closing in, but he’s far enough away that a quick, accurate kick will get it to a man historically very good at pinning the ears back from 50 and sending raking balls into the stands.

But O’Brien is not the man to do it. He handballs 10 metres backward to Mark Keane, also not the man to do it, and all he can do is belt another long, high ball inside 50. Once again, the numbers that congregate under the ball amount to a one-on-one contest, but Langford does enough on Darcy Fogarty to bring the ball to ground, with the result another ball-up.

One minute and 32 seconds remain now.

It’s at this point where you have to question just exactly what in God’s name the plan was for Ben Keays. He’s had perhaps the best night of his career, first kicking four goals to three-quarter time as a classy, tireless small forward roving off every pack and dashing back towards goal faster than every opponent; then, in the last term, shifting on-ball with Jordan Dawson concussed and proving just as impactful, he’s added another.

It’s probably because no Bomber deigned to go near him; from this crucial forward 50 stoppage, not a single Don lays so much as a hand on him, from the initial ruck contest…

… to the subsequent disputed ball…

… to the moment the Crows wrest it free and Josh Rachele gives it right to him, with only a fumble caused by a handball hit slightly too hard preventing him from getting a snap away that, the way his night was going, was bound to go through.

It’s a simply staggering lack of respect for anyone, let alone the best player on the ground, let alone in such a dangerous position, let alone with 85 seconds left in the match, a lead of two points and finals hopes hanging in the balance.

Once again, though, the Bombers have dodged a bullet. How many is that now? Almost as many as the errors that they’ve made.

Yet again, the Bombers force the ball outside their defensive 50 for another ball-up, with the clock ticking down to a minute and seven seconds left.

But now comes another mistake, the last and, while certainly not the greatest, one Durham would love to forget. Roving O’Brien’s tap, he wins possession in one hand, looks to hoof the ball as far and as fast as he can down the line… and in his haste, all but misses his foot with the kick.

Then, the ball-hunter mindset that has turned him into one of the season’s most surprising stars works against him: when Keays out-strengths him for that ball and pushes him away, so intent has he been on winning it that he’s in no position to neutralise and tackle the Crows star. It leaves Keays free to pump another kick inside 50.

It’s Jake Kelly now who’s the spare behind the ball, and he has a nightmare: seemingly set to intercept, he either loses the ball in the lights or simply doesn’t expect the kick to carry as far as it does, because he gets nowhere near it as the ball sails over his head and into chaos territory, with four other Bombers and four Crows converging.

It’s here where Thilthorpe makes amends for his trio of errors: with the ball coming his way and McKay hanging off him while Andrew McGrath closes in, he taps the ball away, in so doing drawing two Dons to himself and leaving one free.

The man McGrath has left to hunt that ball, committing the back pocket’s cardinal sin with 59 seconds left, is Josh Rachele.

And he needs but a second to make him pay, and the Dons for again leaving the goalsquare unguarded.

That the Bombers had their own chances in the final minutes, in particular Nic Martin’s 35-metre snap under minimal pressure that should have sailed through or at the very least made the distance, is almost immaterial.

This was a team so utterly disorganised defensively, so incapable of executing basic ploys like extras behind the ball, guarding the goalsquare and knowing where to kick to with the ball in their hands, that it took a series of blunders from the Crows to leave them waiting to take the lead until under a minute remained.

Frankly, they should have been in front with about three minutes to go, not one.

That’s how you concede 17 goals in a low-scoring era of footy. That’s how you squander a 15-point lead late and give 2024’s fifth-worst team the last three goals of a game to pinch it.

That’s, in short, how you lose a close game of footy.

Only time will tell whether that mad five minutes will cost the Dons much, much more as well.