ESSENDON has not played in the finals since 2004, an eternity. It has won only a third of its games since. One of its defeats this season was by all but 100 points; the other, last week, followed a three-quarter-time lead. Scott Lucas, the best player at the club last year, is out injured. It's a pretty plain old record.

Yesterday, though, the Bombers announced that their membership stood at a record 38,953, surpassing even the 2001 level, which was achieved on the back of an all-conquering premiership. Compare that with, for instance, the Western Bulldogs, who have not been beaten this season, and who in successive Friday night games have come from behind to win impressively, but whose membership is down. What is going on here?

"I believe our supporters are enjoying seeing our young, developing list play exciting football and they have joined up in huge numbers," managing director Peter Jackson said yesterday.

But young players and exciting football by themselves do not explain this demonstration of faith. The Bombers were blessed with both last year. Midway through the season, they had blooded Alwyn Davey, Scott Gumbleton, Bachar Houli and Leroy Jetta, had a 7-4 win-loss record and lay fourth on the ladder. Yet membership stagnated.

Other phenomena are at work at Essendon. The club has a new coach, its first in more than a quarter of a century. That adds two more elements, curiosity about the man and wonder about his plan. For all his powers of reinvention, Kevin Sheedy and his style had lost their mystique.

The Matthew Knights the fans are getting to know presents as dour and plain, but his team does not. Knights' Essendon has gotten with the program, or even a little ahead: it is lightning fast. Knights has put a premium on running, on and off the ball.

Last year, Essendon led the competition in short kicks, and was high on the ladder for uncontested marks. So far this year, Champion Data's stats show that the Bombers are averaging seven or eight fewer short kicks a game, and nine fewer uncontested marks.

It confirms the new emphasis. It also gives Essendon a distinctively different look and feel. And it puts the Bombers with the Bulldogs in the vanguard of a change that is helping to make flooding, the scourge of the game these last half-dozen years, redundant.

Moreover, Knights is maintaining faith with the young. At the end of his reign, Sheedy attracted criticism for his sparing use of youth and his loyalty to veterans. It was in its way understandable: he and they had achieved much together. Perhaps Sheedy was more sentimental than we thought.

But Knights has no such ties. The players he knows best are those who were with him in the Bendigo team the past couple of years. The trading of Mark Johnson was a signal. The reinvigoration of David Hille and Ricky Dyson was another. Knights was not merely inheriting Sheedy's team, he was shaping his own.

Of course, not all the wunderkinds will endure, and the day will come when Knights also will have to make decisions with an aching heart. But it is not yet.

Just as vitally, Knights is keeping faith with his gameplan. Against Geelong in round two, Knights must have been tempted to resort to any of the tactics coaches use to silt up a game, diminishing the spectacle but minimising the damage.

Instead, the Bombers continued to play their way. It made that most unlikely and contradictory of results, an almost honourable 99-point defeat.

Again last week, when they led at three-quarter-time but were down two men and missing Lucas more than ever, Knights did not try to close down the game. They were overrun.

It is unclear now whether Knights refuses philosophically to play a meaner brand of football or whether he is prepared to accept a few canings now, while the team is still adapting to his ideas and goodwill towards him abounds. It is one thing to hold your nerve for half a season, another to hold it for two-and-a-half.

It is also remains to be seen whether Knights is prepared to graft on to the Bombers' gameplan the sort of grimmer edge some believe they will need to play in finals. Notionally, finals are not on the agenda this year. But football changes more quickly now than ever.

Last year, Essendon won the "inside 50" count only three times. This season, it had more inside 50s than North Melbourne in round one, but not since. When the time comes, those sorts of figures will not do.

Nonetheless, the membership numbers suggest that Knights has won one battle, for acceptance. Henceforth, it is war.