Essendon coach Matthew Knights has described his side's 32-point loss to bottom-placed West Coast as rock bottom for the club.
A solemn looking Knights addressed the media with little emotion and looked at a loss to describe his beleaguered side's poor performance as Mark LeCras's 12-goal haul for the Eagles consigned Essendon to a sixth straight loss and a new low.
After a torturous week, with the club roundly criticised by former coach Kevin Sheedy and with murmerings of player discontent rife, Knights's position now looks all the more tenuous.
The Bombers were never in the hunt after half-time with the tension amongst the 26,991 crowd - the worst at Etihad Stadium in Essendon's history - only mounting, with howls surrounding the ground following Knights' ferocious three-quarter time address.
Knights, although bitterly disappointed, was under no illusions as to where the Bombers were at.
"This is as big a hole as we've been in for a while, that's reality," Knights said.
"The most important thing from this point… it's about respect for the rest of the year. Win, loss is irrelevant we've just got to get some respect back and play football at a much better level than we have been."
Knights rejected the notion that the events of the past week - where leading figures at the club chose to come out and declare unity - had affected the Bombers' performance.
"No I wouldn't have thoughts so, that would be a cop-out, we still trained well and sure there was a bit more external (pressure) than usual but that's part of this competition, you've got to be tough enough and resilient enough to deal with it and we weren't," he said.
And he stood steadfastly behind his players and said he was willing to cop criticisms of his coaching performances on the chin.
"I've got to make sure I keep working with the players and they have an understanding I'll keep doing that because that's what I'm about, I'm here for my players, I'm here for my boys."
"You should accept that if you're head coach and you're guiding the ship, you should accept that responsibility."
"I fully accept the criticism that will come my way both last week and this week...what was touched on during the week were some non-truths and some things that weren't correct, but I will take everything on the chin about our football."
"I have to absorb that, be resilient; it's not about me it's about the Essendon players, that's what my role is."
Despite being out of finals contention Knights said the season was far from a lost cause for Essendon and he hoped his side could recapture some on the ingredients that made it a success early on in the season.
"It never feels like a lost cause, it's a really challenging environment and we're going through a really challenging period of what we are endeavoring to put in place for the future," he said.
"Early in the year we were pretty strong in tackling and hardball gets but we were blown away in that area tonight."
"There were a lot of areas that were well short of the mark tonight and we got our right whack but we'll get back to basics, train hard, work hard and hopefully we can turn things around."
Knights admitted there was precious little to take out of the loss but said there were a couple of small positives.
"There were some really average performances tonight but that's collectively as a team...I didn't think we had too many players that performed at a decent level tonight," he said.
"I though Sam Lonergan's willingness to eye the ball and go hard at the ball and the contest was terrific."
"I thought a couple of our younger players in (Travis) Colyer and (Ben) Howlett showed some dare and dash and Winderlich endeavoured to get moving but apart from that it was pretty skinny on the ground - you probably had four or five but the rest were well down," he said.
On LeCras's spectacular game, Knights begrudgingly and with a wry smile, offered his congratulations.
"I think his kicking probably stands out for me, when you can thread them from the boundary line 40-45 out, you've got to take you hat off, that's brilliant football, brilliant skill, he certainly had a night out."