Breaking up is hard, as Bombers struggle to let go of the past

Breaking up has been hard to do for the Essendon Football Club. And for the Bombers, the most difficult relationship to sever has been their love affair with the past.

That it is a past that is close to a quarter of a century old must make matters all the more galling for Brad Scott and Zach Merrett, whose era together should have begun unencumbered two seasons ago but whose leadership at times has been held hostage to an old guard who cannot let go.

Essendon’s outgoing list boss Adrian Dodoro was discovered by Kevin Sheedy 33 years ago.Credit: Stephen Kiprillis

As Kevin Sheedy has agreed to a long-overdue board departure and veteran list manager Adrian Dodoro has taken leave to deal with personal matters, it is worth harking back to Scott’s appointment two seasons ago and the assurances he was given by new president David Barham and his team.

Dodoro was not expected to return to the Bombers, having come close to accepting that his time was up, said two club sources who would not comment publicly as the situation remained sensitive in a legal and an emotional sense.

Breaking up with Dodoro – as with Sheedy – has been far more problematic for Essendon’s bosses than it should have been. It is stating the obvious to say that no individual is bigger than the club but too often those individuals confuse the equation.

It had been a messy start for Barham, who faced one of the toughest jobs in sport as he set about rebuilding Essendon. It began with a board split and coup, the brutally clumsy handling of Ben Rutten’s removal and then the embarrassment over the decision to install Andrew Thorburn as Essendon’s new boss – an appointment that lasted one day.

But with the Scott appointment came a series of undertakings that proved less than rock solid from the Bombers’ hierarchy regarding the club’s soft-cap status and also a guarantee that the club would move to overhaul its list management, which had fared poorly in a recent review.

Instead, Scott began his first season as senior coach with a fractured football department, given the decision to retain controversial list boss Dodoro alongside the football boss he had a tense relationship with, Josh Mahoney. Scott was reportedly surprised at the influential presence of Dodoro and premiership star Mark Harvey – who is working in Essendon’s commercial team – in the day-to-day running of football.

Changes were slowly made when Craig Vozzo became the new club chief. For a start, Dodoro remained and reported to the new boss and not Mahoney, who departed after one season with Scott. But my firm view is that divisions remain at Essendon, and that two seasons in, members of the old guard are not fully behind the new coach.

At the time of writing, the Bombers remain a live chance to reach September and their future looks full of hope. Their recent string of close and disappointing losses cannot be squared at Dodoro, but it is fair to say he remains more than simply a symbol of the club’s refusal to break the shackles of the past and move forward. He defends his role, but Essendon have not won a final for 20 years and Dodoro must share some responsibility, including for the list and some recent missteps.

The compromised decision to employ a new list boss, Matt Rosa, but retain Dodoro in a lesser role, has had its moments and now reached its used-by date. The club appears to be coming to the realisation it must move forward with Rosa solely in charge, but Dodoro’s position remained a sensitive issue this week as the Bombers headed towards their final two 2024 home-and-away rounds and their next crucial trade period.

Despite Hall of Fame legend Sheedy’s unparalleled contribution to Essendon and Australian football, his presence on the Bombers’ board while also working in the dual role as paid ambassador remained an insult to Scott and a brand issue for the club. Respecting the past while moving forward unshackled remains a fine line but Barham could have been tougher with Sheedy, who seemed happy to remain on the board until this week.

For a club director of Sheedy’s reputation to break ranks immediately after a senior coaching appointment and declare he voted for another candidate, and had not backed the decision, is unprecedented in AFL terms. Former Richmond director and premiership coach Tony Jewell publicly criticised Danny Frawley’s coaching, later apologised, and then later was voted off the board, but for Sheedy to remain for two full seasons after his comments speaks again to Essendon’s clinging to their history.

Few at Essendon revere Sheedy more than president Barham, who also owed Sheedy after he backed him in the board split that ultimately ended Rutten’s time at the club. But in retaining the four-time premiership coach, the club symbolically put the past ahead of its future.

As Barham did in giving James Hird some genuine hope he had a chance of returning to the club as senior coach. Hird has every right to try to return to AFL coaching if that remains his wish. But it defies belief that he was a genuine candidate for the Bombers’ job so soon after the most catastrophic period in the club’s history, which occurred under his watch.

Still, by placing Hird in a genuine process once and for all, the club seems finally to have dealt with the Hird messiah complex.

Significantly Dyson Heppell, the last of the drug-scandal victims to remain at Essendon, announced his retirement this week. A respected, worthy and popular adornment to the Bombers for so many years, he was described on the club’s website by Barham as an “Essendon person through and through”.

Barham seems up to the task in forging ahead and breaking the ties of Essendon’s often selfish and deluded recent past. It is up to him along with Vozzo, Scott and Merrett to redefine the meaning of the so-called “Essendon person”.

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