Heading out of round 15, and head coach searches are in full swing. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Tasmania is briefing out that they want a coach before the end of the year, you can\u2019t keep Chris Davies and Carlton power brokers off the radio providing non-answers, while Essendon seems to be aiming a bazooka directly at what\u2019s left of their foot after having shot it off what feels like a million times.<\/a> <\/p>\n\n\n\n Then, from the clubs, there are a few coaches sitting there like Longlegs, looming outside of Lee Harker\u2019s apartment.<\/a> Obviously. the coaches that are picked will be let inside, unlike Longlegs, but anyway the point stands. They\u2019re harbingers of doom for the coaches currently sitting tenuously in the seats. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Those coaches are Adam Simpson, Ken Hinkley, John Longmire, Nathan Buckley, and Dean Solomon.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n Clearly, one of those things are not like the others, but Dean Solomon does appear to be the frontrunner for the Essendon job as the James Hird saga seems to have been and gone at least publicly. <\/p>\n\n\n\n He was a shooting star, shining bright and flaming out. <\/p>\n\n\n\n So, in the first instance, let\u2019s rank the coaches that are around and then match them to the available jobs. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Two notes before we get into it: <\/p>\n\n\n\n Clearly, Longmire is the biggest prize in the coaching search. He\u2019s kind of done everything as a coach. <\/p>\n\n\n\n He\u2019s a premiership coach with a 64% winning percentage who played the kind of footy in his last couple of years at the Swans that looks like it would hold up today. The 2024 Swans led footy in front half scoring and were in the top third of the league in pretty much every transition stat as they led the league in scoring and ultimately lost a Grand Final.<\/a> <\/p>\n\n\n\n He also recognised the value of Isaac Heeney as a true full-time midfielder and essentially unleashed him as splash footy from clearance became paramount.<\/a> <\/p>\n\n\n\n He also, crucially, has rebuilt a club. He took over a pretty average Sydney team in 2010 and made them a premier by 2012. Then, when that run ended after 2018, he rebuilt the club over two seasons in 2019 and 2020 and had them back in the Grand Final in 2022. <\/p>\n\n\n\n This is getting Scorsese to do The Colour of Money<\/em>. You send an offer and hope for a yes. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Ideal landing spot: <\/strong>Carlton <\/p>\n\n\n\n I\u2019ve always had a soft spot for Kenny. He got treated like the ugly stepsister by Port, even when he was making a group of sixes look and play like Margot Robbie. <\/p>\n\n\n\n His footy was direct, uncomplicated, and aggressive. His genius was in effectively communicating an us against them mentality that drove Port to four preliminary finals over 10 years with mostly average lists. He must have been like Pacino in Any Given Sunday <\/em>with the hair on fire finals that Port played and won that they had no right to compete in.<\/a> <\/p>\n\n\n\n There was no better example of that than the infamous plane game when Port beat the much more talented Hawks in the 2024 semi-final.<\/a> <\/p>\n\n\n\n But to me, he\u2019s a Kendall Roy style cog built to fit one machine. <\/p>\n\n\n\n He has taken over a place that was torn down to the studs and rebuilt it before, when he took over a Port team that was losing to byes and drove them to 12 straight 10 win seasons. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Any club would be lucky to have Ken, but there\u2019s one place where he\u2019d be perfect. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Ideal landing spot: <\/strong>Tasmania. <\/p>\n\n\n\n I mostly hated Nathan Buckley\u2019s footy. <\/p>\n\n\n\n He was negative, slow, and obsessed with low-damage inside players like Tom Mitchell, and switching. <\/p>\n\n\n\n But, he did win 55% of his games as a coach and his teams had a defined identity. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Beyond that, I imagine that his time at Geelong has taught him about the value of damage and territory in the modern game, working under the doyen of those two principles in Chris Scott. <\/p>\n\n\n\n There\u2019s one club in the market who hasn\u2019t been strong defensively since probably Kevin Sheedy left, and haven\u2019t really had an identity since then either. <\/p>\n\n\n\n While Bucks to the Bombers would be hard from a club pride point of view given it\u2019s like Daniel-son going to join Cobra Kai,<\/a> if Longmire isn\u2019t available then Bucks is the man for the job at Essendon. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The other thing Bucks has going for him is that he is not an \u201cEssendon person\u201d and has the cache to tell the various AIPACs that seem to control Essendon\u2019s decision-making processes to get stuffed. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Ideal landing spot: <\/strong>Essendon <\/p>\n\n\n\n Among extremely stiff competition, including an astonishing amount of AI slop, worst poster on LinkedIn is Hungry Jack\u2019s as a way to skirt the soft cap entrepreneur Adam Simpson.<\/a> <\/p>\n\n\n\n He should stay there and keep regaling us with pearls of wisdom about how footy is just like business and how legacy is a funny thing etc. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Like Bucks, Simpson played negative footy. Unlike Bucks, he\u2019s a premiership coach. Also unlike Bucks, he\u2019s not spent any time trying to add other strings to his bow. Instead, he spends his time on Fox Footy lamenting the extra handball that is now the best way to clean a dirty ball and get runners into clear air. <\/p>\n\n\n\n If we look back at the 2018 premiership team, you can see how far away from the modern game they were playing just in the handball stats. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The 2018 Eagles were first in kicks with 227 and last in handballs by about 10 a game with 128. The Swans are 13th<\/sup> in kicks with 210 a game and first in handballs with 183. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Footy isn\u2019t about conservatism anymore, it\u2019s about dynamism. Based on his commentary, Simpson hasn\u2019t figured that out. Beyond that, is the Adam Simpson media mafia so strong that we\u2019ve all somehow collectively memory-holed the fact that he won 8 games over his final three years? <\/p>\n\n\n\n Why is this guy sought after? <\/p>\n\n\n\n Ideal landing spot: <\/strong>Fox Footy couch <\/p>\n\n\n\n\n
\n
1. John Longmire<\/strong>\u00a0<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
2. Ken Hinkley\u00a0<\/strong>\u00a0<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
3. Nathan Buckley\u00a0<\/strong>\u00a0<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
4. Adam Simpson<\/strong>\u00a0<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
5. Dean Solomon\u00a0<\/strong>\u00a0<\/h2>\n\n\n\n