I don’t know if you saw the news, but Essendon sacked Brad Scott a couple of weeks ago.
As soon as it happened, the James Hird media mafia went back into gear and started agitating for it to happen. Even Hird himself, alongside a blistering media offensive which included basically every famous former Essendon person, said that it should be Hird because Essendon needs an Essendon man.
The piece also noted that Hird is a “master communicator” and uses AI.
I’m generally a bit unsure of whether the fact that Hird bleeds red and black, has a ChatGPT subscription, and has watched footy over the last decade is enough to counter Chris Scott’s tactical wizardry – not to mention the fact that we all bleed red.
I initially treated the Hird push as kind of a hilarious, horrible fascination like when Trump declared his candidacy for President in 2015. But now it feels like it’s going to happen. The powerhouse has got just desperate enough to be seriously thinking about doing something insane.
Because of that, it feels like a good time to return to the late 2000s and early 2010s when clubs bringing back their favourite sons to coach was all the rage for a quick refresher on how it all went.
The first one that got hired was Michael Voss in Brisbane in 2009. He was only three years out of footy when he got the top job in Brisbane. Prior to taking the job in Brisbane, he worked in media while also doing some coaching at the AIS and spending a year as an Eagles assistant before he took over the Lions coaching role.
His first year was successful, taking them back to the finals for the first time since the three-peat. After that, however, the bottom fell out in Brisbane as he struggled to keep up with an adapting game. He won a combined 29 out of his final 85 games at Brisbane.
His tenure wasn’t without its share of controversy either, most famously when the Lions brought in Brendan Fevola in 2010 to try and get them over the top. While Fev played pretty well in Brisbane, kicking 48 goals from his 17 games, in his inexperience Voss struggled to contain the Fevolution as he descended into gambling addiction and marriage breakdown.
Voss’ tenure never recovered after Fev as he struggled to maintain control of the club.
The next one to get the gig was Hird himself at Essendon. Hird was hired by the Bombers in 2011 after the Matthew Knights era bore some exciting footy and nothing in the way of results.
Hird never particularly coached prior to getting the job at Essendon but famously said in August 2010, “there’s something in me, deep in my heart, that says at some point I want to coach Essendon”. He was hired in September 2010.
It worked once before so he’s wheeling it out again.
Between 2011 and 2013, Hird won at least 10 games each year but only made the finals once. Clearly, however, the on-field success was massively overshadowed by the single biggest scandal in the history of the AFL. It was one that was so big that even the AFL couldn’t sweep it under the rug. While I maintain that the fact that no player ever tested positive despite an industrial scale injecting regime is a cause for concern in the game, that’s not the point of this.
The point is that Hird allowed the Dean Robinson and Steven Dank cats into the Essendon hen house – after taking supplements recommended by Robinson himself and feeling terrible – and let them inject the players with the drugs off site. In this instance, James Hird’s masterful communication skills did not extend to being able to tell Dean Robinson that the peptides he gave Hird to self-administer did not work and he shouldn’t be injecting the players or generally be anywhere near a needle.
In a bygone era of accountability, that was enough to end your coaching career.
Not anymore!
Once again, it’s a novice coach struggling to contain the big personalities that come into footy clubs. At least Fev was just gambling and not handing out illegal supplements to players, I suppose.
The last one who got appointed was Nathan Buckley, who took over from Mick Malthouse in 2010. The Bucks tenure is the freshest in our memory so I’ll spend the least time on it, but it’s worth remembering that he took over a great list in a tumultuous period given how poorly the succession plan from Mick Malthouse went.
He was sabotaged by the first premiership winning coach for Collingwood in 20 years on his way in and in the end was still able to put his stamp on the club. While he played negative footy, he’s a success story.
So, the recent history of favourite sons getting coaching jobs is two flaming disasters and one qualified success. The person responsible for the most aggressively flaming, Hiroshima style disaster is in the running once again to coach the club that has never recovered from the destruction his era brought.
It won’t work for them.