Yeah he still hasn’t exactly done a proper apprenticeship, it’s like it’s below him or something, but it would be the only way I’d have him back as Essendon senior coach.
I’d love to see him work under a really good coach like McRae, Chris Scott or even Mitchell, it would really round out his education, because all his other coaching experience has been in the Essendon bubble.
It will be interesting if Canberra enters the league as team 20, if he would be in the running for that gig. That would be in about 6 or 7 years when the new tv rights deal starts you’d assume. The AFL might think his profile would be good for a new club, in the city he grew up in.
A reference from 1990 is what you hang your hat on?
Surely there’s early examples.
Michael Voss at Brisbane was one. James Hird previously was another. Were there any others?
Even for Voss’ stint at Carlton, he was at Port Adelaide as an assistant coach.
Is it too much to ask a head coach to be an assistant coach somewhere in the AFL for at least 1 season?
For what it’s worth I think Hird is done with the afl and is now just rediscovering his love of footy in a less frenzied media environment, but seriously, you could have certainly made the apprenticeship argument when he was first appointed coach in 2010, but now in 2025 it seems to be a ridiculous box-ticking exercise given the guy has already spent years as an afl senior coach, during which time he was in partnership with a premiership winning senior coach in Bomber?
Interestingly every single coach that’s jumped straight in (in the modern era) has said if they had their time again they’d do a proper apprenticeship. They’ve all been failures. I heard Tony Shaw say it just 2 weeks ago too, a name that’s often forgotten about.
Do you think he’d recommend not doing an apprenticeship?
As a Brisbane Board member, I’d think he’d lean towards an apprenticeship than away from it.
He joined Brisbane at the end of the Michael Voss period and since then have hired coaches with an apprenticeship.
Is senior coach off no experience an apprenticeship? You’re the boss, you’re not learning off those underneath you without all the pressure of performance off your shoulders.
The equivalent in the business world would have been what? a top student at university thrown in as CEO without working in a full time office job and climbing the corporate ladder. I don’t think anyone would trust that person to be best equipped to run a business. There’s a reason none of these guys that have been thrown straight into the fire have worked.
It’s not about getting him to “learn the ropes” per se but with any other coach we would want a distinguished resume.
It’d stand to reason that it would help a lot of people who battle with the club’s messiah complex (which was on full display when he went through the process last time despite not being involved with the game for 7 years) would be somewhat soothed knowing he was, say a senior assistant at another club that had a clear run of success.
It just shows a level of seriousness that wasn’t present in 2022 (and arguable 2010).
If nothing else it’d just be nice to have a coach with exposure across broad spectrum of clubs - rich, poor, successful, not so much. Surely that is invaluable as a coach.
My first crack at managing a team in work was a disaster. I lasted 6 months, couldn’t hack it for multiple reasons, as a result suffered a lot mentally, and subsequently left the role feeling like a failure. Maybe 2 years later, after getting away from managing a team, a whole lot of navel gazing, and some realisation of things I could do better, another opportunity came up in a different environment, which I was encouraged to take and I’m happy to say I did a much better job second time around.
I used to think that everybody in leadership is better second time around, but these days I’m not so sure about that. My thoughts on leadership is pretty basic and hardly groundbreaking - that matching a leader to an environment (in any endeavour, be it business or sport) is critical. For example - I think my strength is in taking a team that might be rated say a 4 or 5 out of 10, and improving them to be a 7 or 8. What I haven’t done yet (in either business or sport) is experienced taking a team from a 7 or 8 and turning them into a 10. If I’m honest with myself - I probably don’t have that skillset, but I don’t really have the desire to do that either. The “apprenticeship” I have had has taught me that, and I think that’s why it is valuable to find out what kind of leader you are. It’s not a one size fits all type setup.
If I translate that theory to AFL coaching, (admittedly without really studying it) there are probably multiple examples of coaches who took average teams and made them good, a few examples of coaches who took good teams and made them great, but even fewer who took average teams to being great.
Where Hird fits in to my theory, I don’t think we’ll ever find out… and that’s a bit sad for footy in general I reckon.
He actually did exactly the opposite. Bomba Thompson, the successful premiership coach, advised him not to implement the supplements program. James Hird, the “apprentice”, was actually the boss, and implemented it anyway.
