Essendon can't do anything but stay galvanised as they stare down the demoralising prospect of notching a club-record 18th consecutive defeat, says coach Brad Scott.
The Bombers suffered their 17th loss in a row in Sunday night's 34-point trouncing by the Western Bulldogs.
Essendon, who next face Melbourne at Adelaide Oval on Saturday, previously experienced such a run of misfortune in 2016 when players were suspended because of the supplements saga.
The current streak includes last season's 13-game losing run when they were cruelled by injuries.
"It's just a fact that can't be argued. There's no point," Scott said.
"No one puts the number up with an asterisk next to it and says 'For 90 per cent of those games, you could hardly field a team'. No one cares about that. And I don't care either.
"It's just one of those facts that you have to deal with, and it potentially can get demoralising, but that's what we're fighting against, and that's the challenge that we're all faced with.
"I'm faced with it as coach, our leaders are faced with it and people ask a lot of the time 'What do you want from your leaders?' Well, they need to keep the group galvanised, and they need to perform on-field."
Scott was confident the winless stretch wasn't taking its toll.
"On the surface you'd be concerned about it, but I don't see it with the group," he said.
"I have a lot of belief in the character of the group and the individual players that we've recruited, and they're showing that fight without the reward at the moment, but I'm very optimistic that they're made of the right stuff."
The Essendon boss refused to write off the season despite a 0-4 start.
"You can go through history and lots of sides have started like this, even worse, 0-5, 0-6 and played finals ... we're not anywhere near starting to look at finals as out of reach or anything like that," Scott said.
"But we're not focused on those things anyway. We're focused on consistent improvement of our players."
Jordan Ridley should return against Melbourne, and the Bombers had more good news on Monday with confirmation defender Zach Reid had avoided a fresh hamstring strain.
Reid, who has had a torrid run with injuries, sat out the final quarter on Sunday with hamstring awareness, with Scott not taking any risks.
"He wanted to start the last quarter, but ... he was aware of his hamstring," Scott said.
"I took it out of his hands. Just given his history, I wasn't prepared to take the risk."
