Former Essendon playing great James Hird has been officially named as the Bombers’ new coach. The 37-year-old Hird replaces the sacked Matthew Knights as coach of the AFL club.
Hird was one of Essendon’s most decorated players, co-winning the 1996 Brownlow Medal with Michael Voss and claiming five club best and fairest awards.
He also captained the Bombers for eight years and was a key member of their 1993 and 2000 premiership teams.
Since retiring three years ago, Hird has held a senior role with sports marketing company Gemba.
After signing a four-year deal with Essendon, the new coach said one of his first tasks would be to unite the club.
“The journey has just started and I’m very excited to be on it,” said Hird.
Two-time Geelong premiership coach and former Essendon skipper Mark Thompson has also been strongly linked with a return to Windy Hill to take over as the club’s director of coaching.
Hird said he had yet to speak to his former teammate Thompson, after only officially winning the Essendon job at 7am (AEST) on Tuesday.
But he said it was imperative that Essendon put together a strong coaching group.
“I believe it’s about a coaching panel, I don’t believe it’s about one person,” he told a packed media conference.
Hird thanked his wife, four children and business partners at Gemba for their support.
“I feel very proud and privileged to be named coach of the Essendon football club, the club I’ve supported all my life and played for,” he said.
When asked to describe what sort of coach he would be, Hird said: “I’d like to think I’m an approachable person, an easy person to get along with.
“… I think an open door policy is an important one and that transparency is important.”
He said there would never be a better time to to take over as Essendon coach than when the traditional powerhouse club was at rock bottom, having finished in the bottom five on the ladder in four of the past five years.
Club president David Evans – a close friend of the Hird family – insisted the search for Knights’ replacement had been an exhaustive one and that Hird had made an outstanding presentation to the board.
Hird told the board that he was not interested in coaching the club unless they viewed him as the best candidate, rather than one who would primarily help the club in a marketing sense.
Hird will need to move straight into his new role, with trade week beginning in seven days’ time, although he did not expect the Bombers to be major movers during the player-exchange period.
“We need quality midfielders coming into the club to support the midfielders we’ve got at the moment,” he said.
“We might be involved in trading in a little way, but fundamentally it will be all about the youth … going forward it’s all about youth.”
Hird refused to put a timeframe on when he expected to deliver the club their 17th premiership, but he promised members and supporters they would see improvement every year.
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