Here We Go Again: The Bombers, Hird and the Hope That Never Dies

One win from eleven games. One. And somehow, impossibly, the most eye-catching part of the whole sorry saga is not that Brad Scott has been shown the door — it’s that the name James Hird has been allowed back into the conversation without anyone at Essendon Football Club flinching.

Welcome back to being a Bombers supporter, friends. Pull up a chair. We’ve kept it warm for you.

The Scott Era Ends With a Whimper

Look, Brad Scott is a good football man. He did an honest job rebuilding North Melbourne before he came to Tullamarine, and nobody who genuinely loves the game takes any pleasure in watching a bloke lose his job mid-season. But one win from eleven games in 2026 is a number that simply cannot be defended, regardless of injuries, list issues, or the alignment of Jupiter.

The Bombers have been a mess in the contest, soft at the coalface, and utterly directionless through the middle of the ground. The midfield brigade — which on paper should be one of the more exciting in the competition — has looked like a group of blokes who’ve only just been introduced to each other. The scoreboard has reflected that every single week.

So the sacking itself? Fair. Overdue, even. No argument from me there, and I’m someone who’s had a lot of practice rationalising catastrophe.

\h2>Solomon Stepping In as the Steady Hand

Dean Solomon looms as the interim solution while the club figures out what it actually wants, and there’s a certain poetry to it. Solly was a magnificent Bomber in his playing days — high-flying, courageous, the sort of player you adored watching in the red, black and yellow. He’s been working his way through the coaching ranks with genuine purpose, and from all reports the players respond to him.

An interim gig is never easy. You’re essentially being asked to steady a ship that’s taking on water, with no real authority to rip out the hull and start again. But if anyone can at least get the playing group running hard and competing hard while the adults work out the succession plan, Solly seems like a reasonable bet.

Whether he wants the full-time role — or whether the club wants him in it — is the question that’ll define the next few weeks. I genuinely hope he gets a proper crack.

And Then There’s That Name

Right. James Hird.

I’ll be honest with you: when the notification landed on my phone that Essendon were not ruling out a Hird return as head coach, I sat very still for about thirty seconds. Not in excitement. Not in horror. In the specific kind of exhausted disbelief that only comes from being a Bomber supporter for several decades.

I have lived through the drug saga. I watched that entire period with my hands over my eyes. I’ve sat through Tribunal hearings, appeals, Federal Court applications, and enough MRO deliberations on Essendon players to have basically completed a law degree by osmosis. I know what the Hird era produced on the field — it was genuinely beautiful football, some of the best we’ve seen from this club in the modern era. I also know what came after it.

So when Andrew Welsh says he’s not just running an old Essendon boys’ club, I want to believe him. I really do. But allowing that particular name back into the frame — even as a vague, unattributed possibility — is exactly the kind of move that makes the outside world stare at us like we’ve grown a second head.

Welsh Insists This Isn’t the Boys’ Club

The Essendon president has been at pains to stress that this search will be merit-based, that the club won’t be pushed around, that they stood firm when the Zach Merrett trade request came through last year and they’ll stand firm again now. There’s a certain bravado to all of that which I admire, even when I occasionally question the execution.

Blocking the Merrett trade was a gamble. You could argue it’s paid off — Zach is still here, still one of the best ball-winners in the competition on his day — or you could argue the whole situation created an atmosphere of friction that’s contributed to the mess we’re now watching. Both views have merit. Welsh won’t be losing sleep over the outside world’s opinion either way, and fair enough.

But the coaching appointment is bigger than the Merrett call. Get this wrong and the Bombers aren’t just a mid-table disappointment — they’re a genuine basket case for the next half-decade. The list is young enough, and talented enough, that the right senior coach could still turn this into something. That’s not delusion, that’s just reading the list clearly.

What the Bombers Actually Need

Here’s what I reckon, for whatever a slightly battered Essendon tragic’s opinion is worth at this point in proceedings.

• A coach who commands respect in the modern game. Not a retread looking for a second chance. Not someone who’ll be undermined from day one because of historical baggage.
• A clear, identifiable game style. The Bombers have had more identities in the past decade than most clubs manage in thirty years. Pick something and commit to it.
• Stability in the football department. The revolving door through Tullamarine has to stop. Players can’t develop when everything around them keeps changing.
• Someone who actually wants to be there for the long haul. Not a favour to the club, not a favour to a bloke they used to play with. A genuine, hungry football coach who sees this job as a career-defining opportunity.

Whether James Hird fits that profile is a conversation the football departement and the board need to have with cold heads and zero sentimentality. My gut says the baggage is too heavy, the external scrutiny would be relentless from minute one, and the story would consume the club before the first pre-season session is done. But my gut has been wrong about Essendon matters before. Many, many times.

The Hope That Never Quite Dies

Here’s the thing about being an Essendon supporter that non-Bomber fans never fully understand: we are constitutionally incapable of giving up. We have been through more institutional trauma than most clubs will ever see. We have watched legends fall, coaches depart, stars request trades, and administrators say things at press conferences that make you want to hide under the couch.

And yet. Every single pre-season, every single time there’s a personnel change, we look at the list and we think: this could be the year. The talent is there. The history is there. The expectation — always, forever, exhaustingly — is there.

Brad Scott deserved better support than he got, and the playing group deserves better clarity than it’s been given. Dean Solomon deserves a genuine opportunity, not just a few weeks as a placeholder while the board looks for a bigger name.

And the Essendon Football Club deserves to make a decision about its next senior coach that is based entirely on football logic, free of nostalgia, free of political point-scoring, and free of the temptation to reach back into the past because the future feels uncertain.

We’ve tried uncertain before. It didn’t go great.

Get this one right, Andrew. We’re running out of patience — but as any Bomber supporter will tell you, we’ve never quite run out of hope.