Essendon coach news: Jon Ralph on whether James Hird could return to Bombers

Fans should cheer for a James Hird coaching comeback that could lead all the way to a senior role. But that can’t be at Essendon in 2023, writes Jon Ralph.

Could James Hird return to Essendon?

Nearly 25 years after Tony Shaw was sacked by Collingwood — never to coach at any level again — football has become exceptional at granting second chances.

Only months after a humiliating sacking David Noble is already at work on a St Kilda review and Ben Rutten is already fielding calls for assistant roles next year.

It is why many people should and will cheer for James Hird to embark upon a coaching comeback that could take him all the way to a senior role.

For those who will stubbornly attribute all of Essendon’s drug saga failings to the senior coach, many will barrack for a comeback story from the darkest depths as Hird at one stage attempted to end his life.

Michael Voss was given a second chance at coaching by Carlton.

James Hird working with the Giants this year.

But the latter camp also want him to have earned his reprieve.

It surely cannot be at Essendon and it surely cannot be in a senior role after around 30 days of coaching at AFL level in the past seven years.

If Hird committed himself to 12 months of full-time assistant coaching at an AFL club he would be among the hottest senior coaching prospects next year as an array of options open up.

Parachuting Hird into the vacant Essendon coaching role almost exactly seven years after he was finally sacked in 2015 — after only 13 weeks of part-time coaching at GWS — is surely not learning the lessons of the past.

James Hird chats to Giants co-captain Stephen Coniglio.

More than any other issue in modern AFL history the Essendon saga divided the AFL community into two wilfully opposed camps.

Jobe Watson, stripped of a Brownlow and banned for a season along with the Essendon 34, made clear his objection to a speedy Hird return on Saturday night.

Peter Jess, fighting in the Federal Court for Nathan Lovett-Murray to receive all WADA and ASADA documents to clear his name, told the Herald Sun yesterday his client believed Hird to be innocent alongside the Essendon 34.

“Jobe Watson should not have lost his Brownlow, nobody should have been suspended, but it was by virtue of a corrupt system. In Europe local courts overturned CAS (Court of Arbitration for Sport) rulings. We do nothing and don’t protect our personnel,” Jess said.

“The whole system has treated him and the 34 players appalling. They are victims in every sense of the world. Nathan is still fighting in the Federal Court.”

James Hird high fives a young Essendon fan during his coaching tenure. Picture: Michael Klein

Yet how could Essendon hire Hird again without those memories of so many years of turmoil flooding back.

Remember all those headlines?

Show cause notices, “comfortable satisfaction”, institutional failings, pharmacologically experimental environment, black ops, “Say That Again”, Essendon 34, thymosin beta-4, “blackest day in sport”, Stephen Dank’s picket fence, the Weapon, CJC-1295, ‘Doc’ Reid’s letter, consent forms, Operation Cobia, AOD-9604, self-reporting, “We were guinea pigs in all this”.

As recently as September 2020 then-president Paul Brasher said the hangover of those days was still haunting the club with coaches unwilling to push players returning from bans as hard as they could have.

How can Essendon bring Hird back into that environment, even if Michael Hurley’s retirement means Dyson Heppell is the only member of the Essendon 34 still on that list?

No one doubts Hird is capable of coaching at senior level again because the small sample size showed he had something magnetic in him as senior coach.

Brett Ratten is another coach who earned a second chance at St Kilda.

As Brendon Goddard told the Sacked podcast of his coaching in that 2013 season where the Dons went 14-8 before being booted from the finals: ““I know when he was coach he had the potential to be great,” Goddard said.

“He had no prior experience, he was one of those experiments like Vossy (Michael Voss). Bucks (Nathan Buckley) did a little bit thorough AIS (and Collingwood), Hirdy walked straight into the role of senior coach.

“He was smart enough to realise what was important and about relationships, great footy IQ, good communicator with the guys. He would sit next to them and walk around the plane on interstate trips and sit next to everyone, and I firmly believe he had the potential to be a great coach and I don’t use that term lightly.”

Hird and Michael Voss moved on in very different circumstances in August 2013, with Voss sacked and Hird paid $1 million not to coach the Dons in 2014.

Consider their paths since then, with Voss joining Fox Footy in 2014 then spending seven years honing his craft at Port Adelaide as midfield manager and then senior assistant.

Yet in the past seven years Hird has coached at GWS two days a week for 13 rounds, while at senior level Hird has coached 15 games of football as the head coach since August 24, 2013 after his short-lived 2015 stint.

Hird is capable of coaching greatness and at 49 years of age has so much good he can give to the game.

He can still play his role in one of football’s redemption stories but nearly 10 years since Essendon’s 2012 peptides program was kickstarted the Bombers need to roar into the future, not dwell in the past.