ESSENDON’S NAB Rising Star nominee Bachar Houli says the Bombers will stay loyal to their attacking game plan this weekend, despite facing the defensively-oriented Sydney Swans at ANZ Stadium on Sunday.

“We’re not going to stop our running game,” he said.

“We want to play on our terms. We respect Sydney and the way they go about their football, but we’re not going to stop the way we go about our game plan.”

The 20-year-old insists that the playing group has not been distracted by the revealing of selection policies at Bomberland by chairman Ray Horsburgh and coach Matthew Knights’ public expression of disappointment at the leak.

Horsburgh said that senior players Damien Peverill and Jason Johnson would struggle to get game time under the club’s youth policy.

“We were brought into a meeting during the week about the situation with our president and Matthew Knights,” Houli said.

“We all discussed it, because the way you’ve got to look at it is that we’re a team, a strong-bonded team. You can’t let any type of information get out. Those two guys we received the news about really disappointed us, because they’ve been real champions at the club and are so respected to this day.

“They really support me and teach a lot of the young guys coming up about how they should go about their footy. That’s why I was truly upset about those comments. But we’re just putting it behind us and letting the coaching staff and the board look after that.”