James Hird — January 2017 onwards

While you’re in this helpful mood. I was wondering if you could help me with something else. Where is the paw?

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Farking pedants, they so ■■■■ me.

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I’ll preface this by saying that I think Kevin Sheedy is the most important figure in Essendon’s history. He is the reason the club is where it is today. But the end of 2007 he had gotten stale after trying to top up with mature age recruits. A change had to be made. I think it’s quite revisionist to say he should have stayed and if the club wanted to go on the succession plan route it should have started in 2005.

All big clubs go through a similar transition. Look at Arsenal and Man Utd in the EPL. Demons with Norm Smith. It’s always going to tough to replace someone that’s been there so long.

As for hiring Weapon and Dank, I’m sure if we still had the archives of old blitz, everyone would have been pumped to get the fitness guys from the Geelong premierships, who came recommended by Bomber himself.

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Stuck to the stupid bird’s leg.
Which is in the rubbish bin.

With the rotten Paw Paw I threw away earlier, … which did not have a fkn Bird attached to it.

Not sure how I feel about Merrett describing Hird as “someone outside the club”. I guess it’s technically correct but still a punch in the guts.

YES YES YES

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Did really well, young Zerret, I thought.
Quick thinker, which shows in his game play.
Fielded that question perfectly, while diffusing the hype and closing the subject.

No, that is what Hardwick proposed. Knights said the list was good enough to push for finals again with some fine tuning.

Reputedly.

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And; approved of by the AFL. After all they had both worked at the love child of the AFL, The Gold Coast Suns.

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Not allowing? What makes you think that was an option? Hird was quiet happy in media land at that time and making no noises about coaching and Sheedy was certainly of the mind that he was the Coach for Essendon for many years to come so wasn’t entertaining any thoughts about a succession plan.

I agree though that the failed Knights tenure lead to the other failures.

I was lucky enough to be part of a group that played host to Kevin Sheedy a few weeks back. It was a small group of about a dozen or so and the discussions were quite intimate. It was interesting to hear his views on the Club’s decisions regarding coaches after his tenure.

Hirdy’s got the Weapon!

Geez at the time, we all loved BT and the weapon stuff.

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Not sure if it’s been posted previously as I CBF going back thru
I only managed to get some time on the freeway this morning to listen to Hirdy & Crawf podcast

What I thought was really funny was Hirdys recollection in great detail of the Wangaratta flight debacle
He described how it all happened & how the pilot attempted to land at ■■■■ but couldn’t then had to return to Melbourne only to land about 30mins before the bounce!!
He said how Ian Robson was going ballistic at him over the phone when he found out
He described how players were puking on the plane like the scene from “Almost Famous”

But the clincher got me and what I was extremely happy to hear Hirdy say was something like “at the time it was the biggest controversy I’d ever been involved in but little did I know …”
Not to trivialise the saga or its impact on our players Hirdy / Bomber etc, but his tone of voice was one of calm and someone that sounds like publically at least he has moved forward from the impact it’s had on him & his family

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Who got the only positive test.

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Yes and it didn’t matter go ASADA and no one much cared about it. Counts to have friends in high places.

my god…

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They’re putting out some pretty substandard episodes of the Crawf and Hirdy podcast recently, chatting and laughing for an hour, then blasting through the games. The Mick McGuane one actually was the most interesting one for a while, great analysis. Hopefully they pull it back in.

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Actually I thought that was boring

Agreed that the actual footy discussion is about half of what it was earlier in the season. Maybe something to do with the fact that they are barely both there at the same time?