Inside the ‘redemption campaign’ to reinstall James Hird

The plot to reinstall James Hird as coach of Essendon – or the “redemption campaign”, as club leaders called it – turned serious in March last year.

It began with a telephone message from former Bombers chairman Paul Little to David Barham, who held the job then, in the days following Essendon’s 10-goal loss to Adelaide in round two. Little wanted a meeting.

The timing was self-explanatory. Little, a key Hird supporter, was dismayed on the eve of the 2025 season when the club announced it had extended coach Brad Scott’s deal until the end of 2027.

Successive season-opening losses followed the contract announcement and the phone call took place after the Bombers’ MCG thrashing by the Crows on March 22.

Little would not say why he wanted to meet, despite several requests from Barham, and the meeting never took place. But, two months later, the former chairman and one-time seven-figure Essendon benefactor told this column that he would not rule out returning to the board if “the time was right.”

At the time, Little refused to publicly address whether he wanted Hird to return as the club’s senior coach, but he had communicated that view to several associates who would not be named given the private nature of those conversations. He had also held conversations with club directors during 2024 expressing his misgivings about Barham.

One director, who again would not be named for confidentiality reasons, said Little described Barham as a “cowboy”.

The public face of the “redemption campaign” – and it was not a term coined with affection or affirmation from the hierarchy during the difficult days of the past season-and-a-half – was the club’s legendary four-time premiership coach Kevin Sheedy.

Sheedy was a club director and Bombers ambassador who is no longer paid by the club, having moved to the AFL’s books. He controversially announced after Scott was appointed coach in late 2022 that he had voted for Hird – the losing candidate – and believed Hird should have returned to the club as coach. Incredibly, given his directorship was largely symbolic, he remained on the board for another two years while Scott coached.

Sheedy hit the airwaves again this week, endorsing Hird after Scott was sacked. Long-time club recruiter and list boss Adrian Dodoro, whose protracted departure after a two-decade reign at the end of 2024 was clouded in legal acrimony, has told Essendon friends he, too, supports Hird.

Ditto Danny Corcoran, whose role in the 2012 drug scandal saw him banned for six months and ultimately ended his time in the game. Corcoran told the Herald Sun earlier this year that Hird should coach Essendon again.

Until Hird publicly placed his hat in the coaching ring on Tuesday night, his interest in the role was less clear than that of his backers. After serving his own one-year ban for his role in the drugs scandal – which also saw Jobe Watson lose his Brownlow, and the Bombers fined $2 million, banned from the 2013 finals series and hit with two years of hefty draft penalties – Hird returned in 2015 but quit before the season’s end after a dismal year.

A number of business ventures followed for Hird, but he never accepted a full-time coaching role in the AFL in the decade that followed. He spent three months at GWS in 2022, helping old teammate Mark McVeigh after the club parted ways mid-season with Leon Cameron. More recently Hird has worked part-time in the VFL at Port Melbourne, this season becoming director of coaching.

It seems fascinating that Hird remains steadfast that he could step back into senior coaching despite so many years out of the AFL system. Just as he clearly did at the end of 2022 when he later spoke with bitterness about missing the job to Scott after feeling assured by club bosses he would win it (Essendon strongly rejected the suggestion this week that the AFL intervened to prevent Hird from winning the job back then).

At the start of 2025 Hird also rejoined the mainstream media on Footy Classified on Nine, the owner of this masthead. When I reported on Channel Seven that Little would not rule out a return to Essendon and that he wanted Hird back as coach, Hird responded that he had no interest in the role and had nearly “fallen off my chair” at the report.

His campaign launch on Tuesday night explained his change of heart was partly due to the rock-bottom situation the club now finds itself in. Surely, even Hird would concede that the “ground zero” – which is how he described Essendon’s current plight – is incomparable to the dark days of 2012 and beyond.

“I’ve suffered a lot, the football club has suffered a lot and the supporters – mostly – have suffered a lot,” said Hird of the mistakes in which he played a part.

Hopefully, the “club” Hird referenced included those former players whose careers were curtailed, disrupted or finished. We say once again, the club still cannot say with accuracy what drugs were administered to those players.

Still, everyone deserves the chance to redeem themselves and whatever Hird’s previous role in the redemption campaign, the Scott contract extension upset and galvanised Hird’s supporters – and Scott’s detractors.

Former chairman Barham explained the extension – which came after a successive 11th-placed finishes in 2023 and 2024 – as a proposal put to the board by then-CEO Craig Vozzo, Barham and the remaining football governance committee members Andrew Welsh and Dean Solomon.

Having signed on to a self-sacrificial rebuild, the coach – according to the board – deserved some extra security.

Interestingly, Hird explained it this way on Nine: “It’s my belief that he [Scott] had a trigger in his initial contract, and he either can’t meet it or didn’t meet it … I’m not sure why he [Barham] would do it now.”

Hird’s timing on Tuesday night, when he announced he wanted to coach Essendon again, was impeccable. It galvanised fanatical supporters – notably on radio station SEN – and underlined Scott’s failure to connect with them, particularly as the losses mounted.

And it was pointed. Hird said the club was at “ground zero.” His campaign pitch included his deep love for the club, his family connection, taking some responsibility for the secret off-site injections that ultimately saw most of his team banned for one season, and the strong player development work he has undertaken in the VFL under Brendan McCartney.

“I think I understand the game, what makes a good team on the field, and I understand how to communicate with players and have a connection with players,” he said on Nine.

Whether or not this was a direct jab at Scott – who seems to have been reduced to a blip on the Essendon radar this week in the face of the force of cult Hird – it was significant, given the club’s view that Scott’s coaching style was stifling his players and that action needed to be taken to allow the team more freedom.

Players were becoming increasingly disenchanted and Zach Merrett wasn’t the only one seeking advice outside the club.

Scott admitted to The Agenda Setters on Tuesday night that he underestimated the job when he took it on. Certainly, the shadow of Hird, the political upheavals, the ongoing presence of Sheedy and Dodoro, the high-performance failures and his relatively threadbare coaching set-up heading into 2026 placed him at odds with success.

But he had to take some responsibility for the mounting losses, his role in the failure to unite the club and the environment at “the Hangar”, which three senior staffers described last week as having become “toxic” as the season spiralled. Scott’s revelation on Tuesday night that he thought Merrett should have left last year conflicted with the club’s version of events.

Although the campaign for Hird continued under Scott’s nose, there is no evidence to suggest his sacking was linked to it.

The resignations on Friday of assistant coach Ben Jacobs and club psychologist Ben Robbins as the team was departing for Perth further underlined the divisions. Both quit out of loyalty to Scott, leaving the injury-depleted club searching for a stand-in psych for the West Coast game and promoting Brent Stanton to the midfield stoppages role.

Given the relative inexperience of football boss Daniel McPherson, the club is also expected to bolster that department with a senior football administrator for next season. But all of the above leave the club alarmingly lacking in football personnel, given that Solomon had only returned to an assistant coaching role this year after three years away from the AFL. Chief executive Tim Roberts is also new to the role, having never worked in football and come straight from the board.

When Hird first announced in 2010 that he wanted to coach Essendon, Matthew Knights was still in the job but was subsequently sacked later that season.

The club paid Knights the $1 million owed for the two remaining years on his contract. Hird was paid an estimated $1 million over the year he was banned from coaching, and now Scott will also receive a $1 million-plus payout. Not to mention the $2 million AFL fine for the illegal drugs program.

It speaks to the wealth and the passion behind the Essendon Football Club that it continues to brush off these hefty financial own goals. It speaks to the Bombers’ messiah complex that so many supporters believe their greatest champion deserves another chance at the senior coaching job.

Not to mention the nonsensical Sheedy view that Essendon requires a coach who deeply loves the club. Surely, Alastair Clarkson, Damien Hardwick, Chris Scott, Chris Fagan and John Longmire, to name a few, developed a deep love for their adopted clubs and the cause within weeks of entering them.

President Welsh pointed this week to Sam Mitchell, Josh Carr and Justin Longmuir as former playing favourite sons who had returned to the fold, but he equally foreshadowed a targeted search for Brad Scott’s right successor.

Should the club target Longmire, it would seem certain that the Sydney premiership coach would be required to take part in a traditional process. Equally, no former senior coach would enter into one with Hird as a candidate. Ken Hinkley and Adam Simpson said as much in recent days.

Barham should never have included Hird last time around, given the divisions it created, although Hird has said that Barham led him to believe the job was his before Hird fronted the coaching panel. With hindsight, Scott should have observed that first red flag and withdrawn.

My view is that Welsh and his team are highly unlikely to appoint Hird at Essendon, due to his lack of exposure to the game at the elite level since leaving the AFL system in 2015; particularly since he failed to gain experience in an assistant coaching role – a lack of experience which cost him the first time around.

Welsh, Hird’s old teammate, was part of a board succession plan orchestrated by Barham, who departed prematurely and battle-scarred by a series of events including a publicised and angry run-in with former premiership player octogenarian Ted Fordham and captain Merrett’s shock decision to try to join Hawthorn.

Even Barham’s supporters say he was rattled, too, by Little’s attempt to intervene in club politics. Welsh, on the other hand, is said to have a good relationship with Little, who was contacted for comment by this masthead.

Now it is Welsh’s job – if he truly believes the Bombers need to finally move on from Hird, the coach – to communicate that to Hird, himself. If he believes Hird is truly a potentially great coach and needs no traditional pathway, he should appoint him. Either way, Welsh cannot be pushed around or swayed by the redemption campaign.

In turn, Hird, if he truly loves Essendon, will accept Welsh’s advice if it is negative and back off while saying all the right things in the process. As they say, if you love something or someone, let it go. If Hird still harbours a desire to coach he should return, like Nathan Buckley did, to a senior assistant’s role at another club.

Therein lies the path to redemption.

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