Only Essendon Could Make a Coaching Hunt a Saga

Essendon has announced the selection panel that will choose the club’s next senior AFL coach, and in a move that will surprise absolutely nobody who has followed this football club for more than about forty-five minutes, it is an in-house affair — with the door left conspicuously ajar for James Hird to walk back through. Of course it is. We are Essendon. Subtlety is not our brand.

Look, I say all of this as a man who has barracked for the Bombers through thick, thin, and several categories of circumstance that don’t even have an adjective yet. I have developed, against my will, a near-encyclopaedic knowledge of the MRO grading system, the Tribunal’s deliberation process, and the precise legal definition of a show cause notice. None of that was on my bucket list. And yet here we are, and here I am, pulling up a chair for another round of the great Essendon coaching drama.

So Who Is Actually On This Panel?

The club has opted to keep the decision-making close to home, which is either a reassuring sign of internal confidence or a flashing amber light depending on your disposition. The panel is understood to be drawn from the club’s existing leadership structure — board members and senior football figures — rather than bringing in an independent recruitment firm or external heavy-hitter to oversee the process.

On one level, that makes sense. You want people who understand the culture, who know what this football club needs, who can properly interrogate a candidate on their vision for the Essendon Football Club in 2025 and beyond. On the other level — and I offer this gently, as a friend — the Essendon Football Club’s track record when it comes to high-stakes internal decision-making is, shall we say, chequered.

I am not being cruel. I am being honest. We have earned this scepticism together, Bomber fans. We bought it at full price.

The Hird Question Nobody Can Stop Asking

Right, let’s just go there, because everyone is already there anyway. James Hird. The greatest player I ever watched in a sash. A man whose coaching tenure, whatever your view on the events surrounding it, ended in a manner that left wounds across the entire football club that have never fully healed.

The fact that Hird’s name is in the conversation at all — that the club has not categorically ruled him out — tells you everything about where Essendon sits right now. There is a powerful and genuine emotional pull toward the idea. I feel it myself, if I’m being completely honest. He is Essendon royalty. He bleeds red and black. And there is a romantic narrative available here that would make even a hardboiled AFL journalist reach for a tissue.

But romance and football realism are two very different things, and this panel has an obligation to seperate them clearly. Has Hird done the apprenticeship? Has he been in an AFL system at any level since his departure? What is his football philosophy for a modern game that looks almost nothing like the one he played? These are not hostile questions. They are the only questions that matter.

What the Bombers Actually Need Right Now

Essendon has a squad with genuine talent at its core. Zach Merrett is still one of the best midfielders in the competition. There are promising forwards, a developing ruck, and a list that should, in theory, be pushing deeper into September than it has been. The coaching appointment is not a rebuild job — it is a refinement and elevation job, which is actually a harder brief in many ways.

What the next coach needs above all else is credibility in the rooms, an ability to get the best out of experienced players who have seen a bit, and a tactical acuity that can match it with the game’s elite clubs. Whether that person is Hird, whether it is an assistant from a premiership club, whether it is someone flying a little under the radar — the panel needs to be asking those exact questions without getting distracted by narrative.

Because here is the thing about Essendon: we have been distracted by narrative before. And it has cost us dearly.

The In-House Approach — Bold or Risky?

There is a credible argument for keeping this search internal. Some of the AFL’s best coaching appointments have come through clubs backing their own judgment — clubs that knew their specific culture, their specific playing list, their specific needs. Richmond didn’t outsource the Damien Hardwick era. Geelong didn’t need a headhunting firm to figure out that Chris Scott was the right man.

But those clubs also had — and I will be blunt here — a stability in their off-field structures that Essendon has spent the better part of a decade trying to rebuild. The question is not whether the panel is capable of identifying the right coach in isolation. The question is whether the process itself will be rigorous, transparent enough to satisfy a member base that deserves better than another chapter of vague press releases, and insulated from the kind of sentiment that clouds hard-headed recruitment thinking.

I hope it will be. I genuinely do. But I have been an Essendon supporter long enough to know that hope and expectation are two very different currencies, and I have been burned spending too much of the latter.

The Members Deserve Clarity

One thing I would urge the panel and the board to prioritise above almost everything else is communication. Not spin. Not managed messaging. Actual, respectful communicaton with the people who hand over their membership money every year through everything — and I do mean everything — this club has been through.

Essendon’s membership base is one of the most loyal in the competition. That loyalty has been tested in ways that would have broken the following of lesser clubs. Those people deserve a clear process, a clear timeline, and a clear explanation of why the chosen candidate is the right fit — whoever that ends up being.

If the answer is Hird, explain it properly. If the answer is someone else, explain that too. Don’t just drop a press release and expect everyone to nod along. We are beyond that now, or at least we should be.

Riggsy’s Honest Take

I want this to go well so badly it almost hurts. I want Essendon to be a football story again rather than a media story. I want the next time I explain to a work colleague why I follow the Bombers to involve talking about contested ball and forward pressure rather than legal proceedings and panel structures.

The panel has a massive job ahead of it. The right coach — whoever that is — could genuinely unlock a team that has been spinning its wheels on the edge of relevance for too long. The wrong call could set the club back another three or four years. There is no middle ground here.

Get it right, fellas. We are all watching. We are always watching. It is, after all, what Essendon supporters do. We watch, we worry, we hope, and we come back every single week. We earned the right to a good decision. Now go and make one.