Allan Hird: What has been achieved by the Barham board at Essendon since the takeover he engineered?

Does David Barham want to expunge the club’s successful past because under his watch the Essendon Football Club is afraid of success? Allan Hird asks big questions of the Bombers boss.

The Herald Sun on 19 December 2024 quoted the following from the Essendon chairman, David Barham after the club’s AGM:

“Harking back to the ‘80s, ‘90s or the 2000s and wishing we could return to that just causes drama and disunity,” Barham said.

“The competition is so far removed from those times, it is almost a completely different game”

My first reaction when I read it was ‘that’s a stupid thing to say’ but after a while I got angry. For a start from 1984 to 2000, the club I grew up barracking for, won four premierships. How many has it won since David Barham joined the Essendon Board in 2015?

Mr Barham, Australian Football today is not a completely different game from the ‘80s and ‘90s. Sure it has evolved but put a 25 year old Salmon, Madden, T Daniher, Baker, Watson, Daisy Williams, Misiti, Mercuri, Lloyd, and Lucas to name a few in the 2025 team and see how we would go.

Essendon coach Brad Scott and David Barham. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Nicki Connolly

The other essential ingredient the club had in the ‘80s and ‘90s was Kevin Sheedy. Sheedy was a coach with a fierce desire to win and he picked players who wanted to win and who had a go. A fifty year old Kevin Sheedy would succeed in today’s game too.

How would ‘harking back’ (to use Mr Barham’s words) to our successful past cause ‘drama and disunity’?

Sure, it’s not nostalgia that wins premierships. But it sure doesn’t help when the club’s chairman says our last four flags are irrelevant.

Paul Weston, an unsuccessful candidate for the board, put the club’s failures down to the lack of desire to compete to win. The two premiership teams Weston played in had a fierce desire to win. The club today, including the coach and the players, needs to regain that desire. Knowing success can be achieved as the club’s past shows surely is an incentive for the current players and coach. But instead Mr Barham says the successes of the past have nothing to teach us.

The Essendon Football Club does have a past and its past pre-dates the AFL and the David Barham regime. Does it have a future?

Well the immediate future looks pretty dismal when one reads this gem from Mr Barham as quoted in the same Herald Sun article:

“What we are doing here is generational change. We are resetting this club so we can experience long-term sustainable success by putting in people, program and systems that will enable that,” Barham said.

Pure sludge and the sort of rubbish that used to be served up by the bosses when I worked in the public service: generational change, sustainable success, programs and systems. It’s just jargon from Mr Barham. How about he tell us what has been achieved since he took over the club a couple of years ago? Under his watch we have stood still if the metric is success on the field. And winning games is what football clubs want. Maybe that is why Mr Barham wants to stop the supporters thinking about the past.

What has been achieved by the Barham board since the takeover he engineered? A coach was sacked who had just had his contract renewed, A coach was chased who ended up at North Melbourne. The CEO was replaced with a bloke who lasted one day. A coach was appointed whose most recent experience was as an AFL administrator. And increasingly, the Essendon Football club seems content with being an AFL franchise.

Kevin Sheedy and James Hird together at Essendon.

Does Mr Barham want to expunge the club’s successful past because under his watch the EFC is afraid of success? Why do we get jargon like sustainable success instead of a team that makes the finals and is competitive?

Why not admit the club has gone nowhere since the time Sheedy was sacked? Why not have a good look at those years and see what led to success? Saying it’s a different game now is arrogant.

There is a lot the Essendon of today can learn from the Sheedy years. We can’t go back but the drive to succeed and the unwillingness to accept defeat would sure be welcome ingredients in 2025 and beyond. Don’t give the club programs and systems Mr Barham. Expect the playing group and the coach to have a passion to succeed like the players in the ‘80s, ‘90s and 2000s had.

– Allan Hird is James Hird’s father

Originally published as Allan Hird: What has been achieved by the Barham board at Essendon since the takeover he engineered?