Essendon coach Kevin Sheedy has full confidence in his new captain, but admits more leaders must be found under Matthew Lloyd at the AFL club.

The Bombers confirmed Lloyd, 27, would take over from James Hird as skipper.

When asked what work needed to be done to develop more player leadership at Windy Hill, Sheedy replied "a fair bit".

There was a sense this season that Essendon lacked strong on-field leadership, apart from Hird and Lloyd, as it dropped out of the finals for the first time since 1997.

But the Bombers blooded several promising youngsters and Sheedy is confident some of them will seize the opportunity.

"Our team, we probably put a lot of young players into it this year and some of those are going to put their hands up pretty quickly, which I think is pretty exciting," Sheedy said.

"Now we've got to really get onto the opportunity that Matthew Lloyd as captain presents to this team."

Lloyd agreed that more players needed to show leadership, saying too much had been left to Hird.

"Our club probably needs to start developing some other people, because he's been so good and so dominant that we've probably left a lot to him when he probably hasn't necessarily wanted that.

"We've probably left too much to him and I've probably done the same thing, thinking 'aw, James is back this week and go back into my shell'."

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