ESSENDON is considering altering its half-time break routine against Hawthorn on Saturday in a bid to arrest a worrying trend that’s hurting the Bombers.

The third quarter is a wasteland for the Essendon this year. They haven’t won a third term in six games and have kicked 12.12 to the oppositions 27.22 in the premiership quarter.

Essendon midfielder David Zaharakis acknowledged the issue as he said he was surprised by the Bombers inconsistent 2-4 start to the season.

“We’re addressing that now, how we go about it coming out after half-time,’ Zaharakis said.

“Maybe we might change it up, something we do warm up wise or anything like that.

‘We’re getting messages across, it’s not as if we’re sitting at half-time doing nothing.

“We might maybe adjust that to try and get a little burst of energy at the start of the third quarter because third quarters aren’t our best ... we do need to work out a way to come out strong.”

Essendon had a willing training session at Tullamarine and Zaharakis said contested football was crucial and it was mind over matter.

“When we’re going well, I think we smashed Adelaide Round 1 in contested footy, when we lose, we go away from it,” he said.

“Footy’s a mindset each week. BJ (Brendon Goddard) speaks about it every week, it’s your effort and your intent, that’s what you should get judged on.”

He backed John Worsfold’s game plan.

“I just don’t think we’re executing our game plan the way we should,” he said.

“I don’t think there’s anything wrong with the game plan.

“We know we want to cause front half turn overs in the field of play and we’re not doing that at the moment, we’re letting the ball leak to our backline on too many occasions.”

Forward Joe Daniher will play his 100th game on Saturday.

Daniher has been heavily criticised this season — he’s kicked seven goals in six games and his kicking action has been questioned, along with his work rate.

Zaharakis said it wasn’t just about kicking goals for the talented tall.

“Joey knows he might not be going as well as he can, but all we want him to do is play his role for the side,” Zaharakis said.

“People saying how many goals he’s kicked, that doesn’t mean anything to us.

“ ... We just want him to play his role for the side, that’s to put forward pressure on, that’s to get up the ground, to get back, to reset, to help out the smaller guys in there.

“His role isn’t to kick five goals a game, that’s not what we want him to do.

“He’s been a great player for his first 100 games of his career and it’s a great milestone for him.

“He knows he needs to work on his game, just as everyone else does.”

Zaharakis also expressed his shock at the arrest of former coach Mark Thompson, but has offered his full support.

Zaharakis played under Thompson at the Bombers in 2014 and while he said he knew him well as a coach, he didn’t know much about his personal life.

“He’s a legend of the footy club, played here, coached here, whatever he’s going through I give him my full support,” Zaharakis said.

“... You don’t expect anything like that.

“Just shocked about everything. You see him come here, train, he was so analytical with his footy, that’s all you saw about him, just how invested he was in his football career you didn’t know anything else was happening.

“Obviously whatever’s going on, is going on and hopefully he best outcome for him ends up happening.”

Zaharakis said Thompson was one of the best coaches he’d had.

“He just knew the trends of the game. He knew how a game was going to play out,” he said.