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James Hird is gone, and he shouldn't be the last

18th August, 2015
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Expert
18th August, 2015
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The bullet has been bitten. Essendon Football Club and their head coach, James Hird, are set to part ways after a reign that started joyous and ended in terror.

Sunday’s belting at the hands of Adelaide – a game that was reminiscent of the Skilled Stadium disaster that led to the demise of Dean Bailey as Melbourne coach a few years back – forced the powerbrokers’ collective hand.

More:
>> James Hird resigns as Essendon coach
>> Essendon and James Hird press conference – live updates
>> The coach must always pay the price

But this is only the beginning. The supplements saga does not end with the demise of another central protagonist.

While the departure of Hird has a distinct air of inevitability about it, the uncertainty remains as to what happens to almost every other facet of the club.

I was very bullish on Essendon’s list earlier in the season. To me, they were a lock for the top eight, playing with a game plan to match it with the big boys. When I wrote about the Dons after Round 4, I was convinced they could mount a challenge for the flag. But I threw in an almighty caveat: the extent to which their 2014 campaign was a function of Mark Thompson’s coaching scheme would decide their fate.

Victory over the Hawks in Round 2 was, effectively, the high water mark of their 2015 campaign, which unravelled for a host of reasons. Injury, sure, but the spectre of off-field developments had to be hanging over the playing group. But it was Hird’s abject failure to keep the side playing Thompson’s way that doomed the team.

The list, chock full of strong veteran talent, now looks too old and too slow to offer much to a new head coach. A rebuild has been ordered, as evidenced by senior assistant Mark Harvey’s remarks on Melbourne radio over the weekend.

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That’s all well and good. But who in their right mind would trade in players who, rightly or wrongly, are staring down the barrel of a two-year ban from the World Anti Doping Authority? Even if there is a remote risk of this outcome, and even if it could take a year or two to eventuate, the potential loss of list flexibility and all-important salary cap space will be a bridge too far for most clubs.

Recent reports suggest up to 20 Essendon players are out of contract at the end of this season. Some will retire, some will seek to move to other clubs, but many will have no choice but to re-sign.

The on field ramifications are big, but it could be off the field where things start to get very ugly for the club.

Early reports suggest Hird will receive his full entitlements, meaning the club will pay some $1 million for an empty chair. That would make it the third time in just five years the club has thrown money at shadows. It has an additional $800,000 in AFL fines to pay, too.

The loss of AFL capital out of this is simply staggering. I’ve seen some back-of-the-envelope calculations that suggest Essendon alone has destroyed close to $8 million throughout this process. Thats almost a full year of Total Player Payments (salary cap).

Essendon’s cash in the bank has shrunk from more than $12 million in 2012 to just shy of $2 million in 2014. You’d expect the belt will tighten a notch or two once 2015’s financial report is released in November.

That Hird was granted a two-year, seven-figure contract extension throughout this ordeal beggared belief at the time, and it beggars belief now. The board, which has overseen miscalculation after miscalculation throughout the later stages of this crisis, should be held to account by their constituents, the members.

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The reaction to the latest chapter in what is now clearly the biggest crisis to hit the AFL in modern times will be fascinating to watch. Will the members continue to be led down the garden path?

Change, after four years, is finally forthcoming.

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