Rutten, like Worsfold before him has failed horribly to create any level of accountability amongst the playing group. They are lazy, self indulgent divas. But to blame a ‘toxic culture’ is patently wrong. Rutten has been handed a level of support and process in his time at Essendon afforded to almost no other AFL coach in living memory. He basically had an apprentice year in 2020 without consequence and we stank. Then he recovered from a pitiful start in 2021 to scrape into the finals on the back of the softest imaginable draw. We got hammered. And this year has seen an alarming decline in standards that has some commentators calling us out as being VFL level.
I respect Rutten as much as the next guy but please, he has not been poorly treated and the decision to review his role and performance is long overdue. Yes,this could have been handled better but the urgency and abruptness of the last two days is due to Brasher’s unwillingness to face reality and therefore placing the whole club in this current, dire position.
Brasher turned a blind eye to the coach’s poor performance despite very publicly insisting that after decades of non performance, the club would no longer put up with being mediocre. Then the old fart spends two years pretending we were not mediocre. As it turned out Brasher was a paper tiger and had to go.
I’ve already written once with the caveat that it’s tin foil as, but if Sheedy has orchestrated this I wonder how long he’s actually been working on it and if he’s been at it a while and only agitated the board when his ducks are in a row I could see his ego telling him he can restore Hird’s legacy at Essendon.
That’s on the coaches. And the players themselves. I agree the club has to be looked at from top to bottom for a range of reasons but that cannot be used to excuse the coaching staff. They certainly had it in their hands over the last 7 years to build a level of accountability and professionalism. Instead we had the Worsfold/Rutten era of feelgood wokeism, where it was up to the players to coach themselves. Never heard or seen so much rubbish in my life.
Dodoro’s ineffectiveness, Campbell’s self righteousness and Brasher’s delusion we’re not and have not been the reasons for why we were torn to pieces by the 12th best team in the competition last Sunday
This is just par for the course as coaching changes of this type are typically messy affairs.
The build up of media/public speculation of the incumbent coach being under the pump.
Pressure increases with cage rattling by fans and commentators.
Ambiguous comments of support by the club, only for them to be working on a change.
Then an embarrassing game bringing it all to a head with " coach losing the players" being the catalyst for a sacking.
New person comes in with smiles and hope all round.
I understand that deadlines make deals and they may already be down the track with Clarkson which is why I think they may have had something pretty close previously. It’s a gutsy move by North though, if they get too pushy, he might just tell them to jam it if he knows we’re keen. My own view and I might be in the minority here, is we should run a proper coaching appointment process for once. If Clarkson is the guy, so be it but I think best practice is to survey all options.