Flashback: Why Tania has always been the power behind the Hird throne
TAKE a look back at Jon Ralph's piece from August last year, in which he explained why Tania Hird is James's Michelle Obama.
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TAKE a look back at Jon Ralph's piece from August last year, in which he explained why Tania Hird is James's Michelle Obama.
JAMES Hird did not have to convince himself to return as Essendon's saviour in 2010.
Instead he needed to persuade his wife Tania that he should replace Matthew Knights as coach.
When football's golden boy considers life's big decisions, he turns to his wife and confidante.
Back in 2010 it was giving up his business and media interests to save a club he loved from slipping into irrelevancy.
"My family is No.1 in my life and it was almost a matter of having to convince my wife, Tania, first," Hird wrote in the Herald Sun.
"She wanted me to be absolutely sure about the decision. Tania told me that if you really, truly want to do it, then go for it."
Tania Hird, mother of the couple's four children, mostly has remained in the background during the turmoil at Essendon.
Yet her dramatic intervention into Essendon's AFL House negotiations with the AFL Commission has thrust a much-seen but little-known woman to centre stage.
An attractive blonde who still dazzles in her regular appearances in best-dressed lists from the Brownlow Medal red carpet, she also is the power behind the throne and has been integral in key decisions this year including Hird's refusal to stand down before the Round 3 game against Fremantle.
Those who know say Hird and Tania have grown even closer through an ordeal during which she has urged him to fight to prove his innocence.
It might be a clumsy comparison, but she is Hird's Michelle Obama.
She is a whip-smart former Corrs Chambers Westgarth commercial property lawyer who is beautiful, impeccably dressed and fiercely defensive of her family.
She is a former state swimming champion and Melbourne Youth Orchestra member who temporarily put aside her own career to bring up her children, Stephanie, Alex, William and Tom.
She was top of her law class, while her husband still jokingly refers to failing 11 civil engineering subjects in his first two years at RMIT.
On Monday as Tania reached across Hird to fiercely sound the horn of his car at waiting photographers, we got an idea of the hell she has lived in recent months.
It was not a cry for help, but rather a scream to get out of her face.
For 200-plus days she has had the media camped outside her Toorak home, analysing her husband's every move.
But she has not been a passive bystander, instead consulted on many of the key decisions Hird has made during this turbulent saga. There are varying interpretations of the events leading into Round 3, as pressure on Hird intensified.
Some reports said there was fierce pressure from within Essendon for Hird to stand down.
Others were adamant he actually stood down for a short time before calling former Essendon chairman David Evans to back away.
Either way it was Tania who urged her man to stay the course, determined that he prove his innocence while he was still Essendon's head coach, not from the sidelines.
Those close to the pair talk of how Tania is strong-willed and ultra-positive, determined to protect "Brand Hird".
The woman who met Hird when she was working at an Essendon pub - she played hard to get but he was persistent, according to him - has been in many of the key legal meetings throughout this drawn-out process.
Tania is one of three key confidantes to Hird, with Essendon great Tim Watson and News Corp chief executive Robert Thomson rounding out a a tight group that has been providing him with support and advice as the supplements scandal has played out.
Hird had refused to detail his friendship with Thomson as recently as 2010, but in a recent profile he said of the keen Essendon supporter: "He's been a great friend and mentor to me."
Watson has vehemently denied he has become a quasi-spokesman for Essendon, yet has undoubtedly given Hird close counsel.
Hird said in 2011 Watson and Tania were his points of reference in life.
"I enjoy getting people's perspective from outside of football - I think it's important to get a bit of outside perspective - but there are also football people that I talk to quite a lot," Hird said.
"I talk about anything important with my wife and I've had lots of discussions with Tim over the summer. Tim's fantastic. He has a great knowledge of football and a great knowledge of sport in general. He reads a lot, throws up lots of ideas.
"I've spoken to him about football since I was very young."
And of Tania more specifically: "She doesn't tell me how to play footy, she never has, but for moral and all sorts of support, she's been the one."