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Essendon must stop pining for the past after finding a semblance of stability

It was all trundling along nicely for Essendon. The club spent the past month gently tempering expectations, reminding everyone that this is a long-term project, that there will be bad losses and barren patches, but to stay the course. On field, they weren’t beating much, but they were winning, they were defending, and they were having a crack. Coach Brad Scott was getting the most out of a limited but willing team.

That all came unglued on Saturday night, when they were trounced by a red-hot Western Bulldogs. Essendon reverted to type and sank back into the pack. Almost immediately, the club was batting away suggestions that Scott’s coaching tenure was under threat, and that Bombers great James Hird was the man to replace him.

In response to Caroline Wilson’s suggestion that the wolves were circling, the former Essendon chair Paul Little reportedly told the veteran reporter: “You never say never to anything. It hasn’t been an easy time for the club these past few years. There may come a time where there is a need for a restructure. If I felt I could add value to the club, and if they felt I could help, I would consider it.”

That was quickly quashed on Nine’s Footy Classified, a program whose entire purpose suddenly seems to be to repudiate what has been reported on Channel Seven an hour earlier. One show says it’s on, another says it’s off. The dogs bark, the caravan moves on, and the rest of us are left scratching our heads.

Hird came within a whisker of reclaiming the Essendon coaching job in September 2022. Kevin Sheedy, his chief backer, was on Lindsay Fox’s luxury yacht, sailing around the world with hundreds of movers and shakers to celebrate the trucking magnate’s 85th birthday. He was confident that Hird would be appointed, and that the old Essendon was back. Back on dry land a fortnight later, he was informed his man had missed out.

Essendon is an unusual football club. For years now it has been very political, riven by factions, dictated to by coterie groups and deferential to its past. It has presented as a club that can’t let go, and still pines for the glory years. It manifests in many ways. You see it in the axe-grinding columns Allan Hird phones into the Herald Sun. You see it in the former players who run for board positions. You see it in lifers like former list boss Adrian Dodoro, who strutted around like he owned the place, became the king of October, drafted the wrong players, and then took the club to the Fair Work Commission.

To his credit, president David Barham has sought to cut ties with the past. “Harking back to the 80s, 90s or the 2000s and wishing we could return to that just causes drama and disunity,” he said at the AGM last year. “The competition is so far removed from those times, it is almost a completely different game.”

Barham has made mistakes and rubbed plenty of people up the wrong way. He sacked a coach, rolled a president, and appointed the shortest tenured CEO in corporate history. But he’s honest about what has gone wrong, and what needs to change. He called it 20 years of “quick fixes and shortcuts”; 20 years of scandals, sugar hits, false dawns, bad trades, draft busts, and schadenfreude; 20 years of Stephen Dank, Andrew Thorburn, Hird and Dodoro.

On Footy Classified on Tuesday night, striking the right balance between bewilderment and defiance, Scott sat next to the man who was said to be in line to replace him. Scott spins a good game. But he and the people who employ him are right. For the first time in a long time at Essendon, there is clarity and a semblance of stability and sanity. To defer to the past, to pine for once what was, and to jump at shadows would rank among the biggest mistakes in recent times at a club that has made more than most.

Crunching the numbers

The Cats midfielder has the highest winning percentage of all current players to have lined up in at least 100 matches ahead of his 300th game on Thursday night.

From the archives

Richmond were winless after eight games and coach Terry Wallace was at his wits’ end. It was 2007 and the Tigers seemed to have the Dreamtime at the ’G game in the bag. But as was their way back then, they found a way to completely stuff it up.

With scores level in the dying stages, Matthew Richardson marked, played on, kicked the goal and celebrated like a crazy man. But the umpire, wearing a PlayStation 2 sponsored shirt, adhered to the newly stiffened up “hands on the back” rule.

Richardson was apoplectic, the Tigers blew the game, and Matthew Lloyd rubbed salt in the wound by kicking a goal after the siren that bent like a Wasim Akram outswinger.

They said what?

Geelong’s boom recruit has helped turn his first clash with Western Bulldogs into a grudge match after an exchange of barbs with former teammates.

View from the stands (or the couch)

“We will stick to our plan and we think the decision has been sound. But it would be useful to get a few players back and not have as many injuries.

“You hold the line and you hope for the injury count to drop.”

Port Adelaide boss David Koch shuts down suggestions that the Power will deviate from their succession plan while speaking on 5AA, as he backs coach Ken Hinkley to see out the season before handing the reins to Josh Carr.

Footy quiz

Which club has won the most Dreamtime at the ’G clashes between Essendon and Richmond? Bonus point if you know how many.

Answers in next week’s newsletter, but if you think you know it, hit reply and let me know!

Last week’s answer: Which club is enjoying the longest current wooden spoon drought? Geelong. It has been 67 years since the Cats finished bottom in 1958.

Congratulations to Mick C, who was first to reply with the right answer.

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