Mark Harvey could be the man to take over Essendon and give them back respect

ESSENDON spent a season in limbo. Mark Harvey is the club legend that can come in and restore some respect.

Mark Thompson

ESSENDON has spent a season in limbo. It stank. It was soul-destroying for players and fans alike.

And as a result of the supplements scandal fine and legal bills, a $5 million debt from its new airport home has ballooned to an alarming $8 million hole.

All of which makes it absolutely critical the club does not spend the next season in the same place.

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Right now there is a danger of that scenario because of the challenges of appointing a coach for a single year and Mark Thompson’s admission he is not a contender.

Appointing Thompson would have allowed the club a full-on tilt at a premiership before a seamless transition back to the newly re-contracted James Hird for 2015.

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Instead there is the prospect of a bizarre season full of waiting before the prodigal son returns.

Why would any budding coach who has real ambitions want to coach Essendon for a season when his prospects of continuing were zero?

The only man who makes real sense is Mark Harvey.

The three-time premiership player, dual all-Australian and 18th best Essendon player of all time (according to the club’s Champions of Essendon list) left Essendon late in 2005 to head to Fremantle.

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In exactly 100 games of coaching at the Dockers and recently as a fill-in at Brisbane, he has witnessed the ruthless nature of football. It is one reason why he has vowed he would not put his family through senior coaching again.

Yet a club that AFL chief executive Andrew Demetriou pointedly stated on Tuesday had an interim chief executive, a banned head of football and coach and a new chairman needs Harvey.

It needs someone who can be pitched as a fresh face without the stain of the peptides scandal.

Mark Thompson

Essendon soon will announce the process and a sub-committee for appointing its new coach.

Given the AFL-Bombers relationship, the club certainly won’t worry about Demetriou’s thoughts, or his suggestion the league had advised about a new face .

One theory that has traction with Essendon players is that Simon Goodwin — who took charge for the final home-and-away game folowing Hird’s suspension — would be an appropriate replacement, but only if he had the support of a more committed Thompson as senior assistant.

But for all his bone fides as a future senior coach Goodwin still has an attachment to the damaging allegations of 2012.

He was not charged in any way — and will never be — despite allegations he took banned substances and sent Stephen Dank text messages such as: “Don’t forget the good gear today, buddy.” Who knows what that means, or what motivation Dank had to release those texts?

The appeal of Harvey is that he is an elite senior coach heartlessly cut down by Fremantle, an Essendon favourite son who could become the man for difficult times. It is some kind of resume for the most unenviable assignment.

When Alan Joyce took over from coaching legend Allan Jeans at Hawthorn in 1988 he won the flag.

Everything Essendon does next year must be about a similar feat, not just easing the path for the return of Hird.