Riggsy: Hird’s Shadow Is the Last Thing Essendon Needs

Brad Scott has been sacked, the Essendon board is in fresh chaos, and somewhere out there the universe is chuckling to itself because — right on cue — the name James Hird has started floating around again. Of course it has. It always does.

I’ve been an Essendon man my entire life. I’ve watched us win flags, I’ve watched us get rolled in grannies we should have won, and I’ve watched us do things to ourselves that no opposition coach could ever dream up. So when I say the prospect of Hird returning in any official capacity is the single worst idea currently circulating in footy, I say it with the full authority of a bloke who has earned every one of his grey hairs watching this club.

The Brad Scott chapter, and what it actually means

Let’s be honest with ourselves for a second. Brad Scott’s exit from Windy Hill — or whatever corporately named facility they’re calling it now — was messy in a way that his departure from North Melbourne in 2019 simply wasn’t. When Scott left the Kangaroos, there were handshakes, warm words from the president, and Scott himself saying something about blue sky. It was almost pleasant, as these things go.

This week felt nothing like that. This was a sacking dressed up in the language of mutual respect, and everybody in the industry knows it. The list hasn’t moved the way the club needed it to, the football hasn’t been good enough, and the board decided — after what I’d describe as a heroic level of patience — that a change was required. Fine. That’s football. Coaches get sacked. It happens at every club, even the ones that pretend it doesn’t.

What matters now is what comes next, and that’s where I start getting a bit twitchy.

Why Hird’s name even comes up

Look, I understand it. I genuinely do. James Hird is arguably the greatest player in Essendon’s history, a bloke who could do things with a footy that you still see replayed and struggle to believe. The love is real. The connection to the club, the jumper, the tradition — it’s all there and it’s all genuine.

And there’s a romantic idea, isn’t there, that the man who was so publicly wronged by the whole supplement saga — and yes, I’m a Bomber so I’ll always believe there’s a much more complicated story there — deserves some kind of redemption arc at Windy Hill. The prodigal son returns, fixes the culture, lifts the flag, credits roll.

It’s a beautiful story. Football is littered with beautiful stories that turned into absolute disasters.

The problem with beautiful stories

Here’s the thing about Essendon and James Hird: the relationship is not a clean slate. It never will be. Every single media outlet in the country, from the biggest broadsheets to the bloke running a podcast out of his garage in Geelong, would turn the story into a referendum on events from over a decade ago. Every press conference, every selection decision, every narrow loss would be filtered through that lens.

The players who are currently on the list — most of them were in primary school when the saga was at its worst. They don’t need to carry that weight. They need a coach or a football director or whatever role is being whispered about, who walks in on day one and the story is purely about football. Not history. Not rehabilitation. Not symbolism. Football.

Essendon’s list issues are real and structural. They need someone who can obsess over that 24 hours a day without the background noise. Bringing Hird back in any significant role guarantees the background noise never stops.

What the board actually needs to do

I’ll be blunt: the Essendon board needs to show, for once, that it can make a cold, rational, football-first decision without being seduced by the narrative. And I say that as someone who loves this club with every fibre of my being.

The next football director or the next senior coach — whoever they hire — needs to meet one primary criteria: they need to be the best available person for the specific job of rebuilding a list, developing young players, and building a contested midfield brigade that can actually win the ball when it matters. That’s it. It’s not complicated, even if our recent history suggests we find it very complicated indeed.

There are credentialed people out there. There are assistants at powerhouse clubs who are ready for a step up. There are former senior coaches who’ve learned from their experiences and come back stronger. The market is not empty. The board just has to be disciplined enough to follow the footy rather than follow the feeling.

The players deserve better than symbolism

I think about Zach Merrett, who has given this club absolutely everything for years in circumstances that would have broken a lesser competitor. I think about the younger kids on that list who’ve come in with genuine excitement and found themselves stuck in a cycle of almost-but-not-quite. They don’t need a symbol. They need a plann, a proper football plan with genuine structure and genuine belief behind it.

The thing that kills me about Essendon’s recent history is that the talent has been there. It’s not like we’ve been watching a club with no players. There are genuine contributors across that list. The problem has been cohesion, contested ball, and — if I’m being uncharitable about it — a culture that hasn’t quite found its edge. Whoever comes in next needs to fix that from the inside out. That’s an unglamorous, grinding, detail-obsessed job. It’s not a job for someone whose presence alone turns every training session into a documentary.

A message from the terraces

James Hird loves Essendon. I have absolutely no doubt about that. And Essendon — the fans, the history, the jumper — loves James Hird. That love is real and it should be honoured. Invite him to ambassador events. Have him in the committee rooms. Let him be part of the club’s story in ways that don’t put him under the kind of scrutiny and pressure that comes with running the football department of a club that is under a very bright national spotlight.

But keep the football decisions about football. Make the hire that gives the list the best chance of turning into a September contender. Do it quietly, do it thoroughly, and do it without letting the romance of a return override the logic of what this football club actually needs right now.

We’re Essendon. We’ve been doing the dramatic thing for long enough. I reckon it’s time we tried boring. Boring sounds really, really good to me right now.