In a season full of good news stories at Essendon, utility Jason Winderlich has provided one of the very best of them.

Last year a back injury restricted Winderlich to just nine games, a severe blow coming as it did the year after he won the Bombers' most improved player award.

No-one at the club gave him a chance of returning to action until well into the 2009 season, at the earliest.

Winderlich, though, had other ideas and his rapid comeback as a regular member of the senior side, shocked even himself.

"I surprised a lot of people, especially the medical staff," he said.

"I had the first operation on June 30 last year on my back and I had the second one on October 13.

"The first time I ran was December 22 so to start playing footy in our first practice match at the Whitten Oval at the end of February was a lot quicker than what we thought.

"It's been great because I didn't expect to play much footy at all this year.

"I didn't think I'd be back training as early as I was. I would have only started training at the end of January or start of February.

"I thought I would have had to play half a dozen games at the start of the year in the VFL to get fitness and then come into the seniors but it all went along pretty quickly."

Winderlich - who has only missed one game this year - said he was inspired by the example of teammate Scott Gumbleton who has battled injuries since his 2007 debut.

"I've had very similar operations and Scott's travelling along really well now which is good," he said.

"He joined in a few training drills on Tuesday and over the next couple of weeks he'll progress to doing some slow movement, in terms of doing some ground balls, a bit more agility and those sort of things.

"But I think our real focus for Scott is not to pressure him. We don't want him to think he has to come back and play this year.

"It's all looking forward to next year for him and if he plays at the end of the year it will be a bonus."

Winderlich is preparing for Essendon's second successive blockbuster - against Collingwood at the MCG on Friday night - and said his injury worries are behind him.

"I really go out there with a pretty clear mind week-in, week-out," he said.

"If we can win this it will entrench us in the eight. The last few weeks we've been in and out, in and out so it would be good to challenge a top four side like Collingwood.

"So far this year we've beaten our main rivals in Richmond, Hawthorn, Collingwood and Carlton so it would be good to beat Collingwood again - twice for the year as we have with Carlton."

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