James Hird — January 2017 onwards

Interesting.

In a way they did probably need someone to make the hard decisions and clear out senior players all of which Hird played with & Sheedy would have retained.

And expected the club to bottom out somewhat. Knights sacrificial lamb of sorts IMO

But I’m sure if it was put to them Sheedy and Hird also would have been able to do what was needed as well.

Are you guys too young to remember this or too old? Seriously it was common knowledge. Once Sheeds knew the Board were going to replace him he nominated Hirdy as the best candidate for next coach and he offered to transition him into the job. I think the Board probably thought it was too soon to lock Hirdy into a senior coaching position (albeit in a couple of years) and wanted to make a clean break from Sheeds. Both positions are understandable although they look bad in hindsight.

In an alternative universe the Board picked a decent senior coach who rebuilt the list over 3 years. Hird became an assistant and then took over and is currently coaching for his 7th premiership. In that universe, Dank is an annoying little chihuahua who bit Caro and gave her rabies.

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On the other hand, he also revealed Blitz favourite Jackson paid for our 2000 anti-social fines.

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I thought it was great too. Such good insight and passion

Im sure Ive heard Sheedy say it some where before. or maybe even in his book

Yep it’s one of his go to stories.

His time was done and there was no way they were going to extend… nor should they. Going for the cheap option (Knights) rather than the better option, is something we’re still paying for.

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Maybe he was channelling Blitz?

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Neither had I but the board had heard the succession plan idea from Sheedy before and likely thought it would be used the way it was before, 2 years to save his hide. Sheeds himself only recently admitted he stayed a few years too long in hindsight. Who knows? It’s irrelevant now.

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Robert Shaw always sounds like that, has a great footy brain but doesn’t articulate at all well. Much better writer.

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Pretty sure Sheeds spoke about it at the time… Would have been a great option imo.

I’d never heard the succession story either. The worst part of that isn’t that that they didn’t go down the Hird/Sheedy path, but that Jackson was set on Knights being the successor from the start.

If you wanted to have a succession plan with Knights why was he not in a position where he was Sheed’s right hand man, and could learn directly off him and gradually take more responsibility. Reserves coach is not one of the highest rated positions in a coaching group in modern setups.

It sounds like Dimma’s laptop failure was less a meaningful mistake on his own part and more the excuse needed to hide Jackson’s own lack of due process in finding the right person for the job.

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I don’t think succession plans work when the person occupying the No 1 job doesn’t want to go on their own accord. I think it was fair for the Board at the time to have concerns that there would be problems if a clean break from Sheedy wasn’t made…

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Is it just me or is Hirdy really conservative with his margins when tipping?
eg. Port against St Kilda he thinks Port will win comfortably, but then has a margin of 14 or 16 or something.

He rarely has a margin of more than about 30 points.

I really think Knights came in to do a job and move older players on without having that stain the reputation of the next coach, while we were doing this we wern’t going to be much chop so no need to pay mega dollars to do this. Why we extended his contract is the real mystery…

Yeah I have noticed that too… he is also routinely in the bottom 3 in the Herald Sun tipping each year.

I thought Knights did an excellent job leaning up the list.

I too am mystified why the board gave him an extension as quickly as it did…unless it was triggered by some clause.

I thought (no hard evidence) that Knights was given an extension as the players were becoming a bit concerned with his methods and game plan, and he lost support from lloyd & fletch. The Board wanted to send a message that we are Essendon not richmond and we stick with our coaches…until we don’t.

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I got the feeling that the decision to extend was very much driven by Peter Jackson. He seemed to be the one who was pushing hardest for him in the first place.

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**[quote=“beer-man, post:2865, topic:3833, full:true”]
I really think Knights came in to do a job and move older players on without having that stain the reputation of the next coach, while we were doing this we wern’t going to be much chop so no need to pay mega dollars to do this. Why we extended his contract is the real mystery…
[/quote]

Did he actually do this? I thought part of the reasoning for him over hardwick is he thought the list didn’t need a through rebuild.

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Knights was the hatchet man. Lots of people became p1ssed with him and left the Board alone.