What are we really going to learn about Rutten from Monday to tomorrow.
If we are really deciding whether Rutten is the guy or not based on tonights game, we are in more trouble than i thought.
If we don’t think he is the guy we should of let the guy know sooner.
If he is the guy it should of been announced yesterday.
Except he pointedly commented on how hard not making his decision was on Rutten. Why say that if he had already told Essendon?
Imagine letting Dudoro and Harvey have ANY say on the direction of the club 
Has Sheedy’s fingerprints all over it.
Even more stupid than letting players have their say on who should coach them or how that coach should be treated…
And we’ve managed to do a number of key player re-signings, but if things don’t improve with what we do next those players will be justified in wanting to move elsewhere.
We have had the makings of a strong list for a while but that hasn’t translated at all onto the field. Stuff this up and we may well lose this next bracket of kids.
If this is the case, the power schism between Dodoro and Mahoney, then we need to clear em all out.
Dodoro
Mahoney
Campbell
Harvey?
Anyone else with an axe to grind needs to fark off.
I used to laugh when the opposition would compare Essendon’s love of Hird to an American religious cult.
I now believe it more and more.
I am actually speechless he is even being considered and this is being spoken about, not only on here but in the media. “I am without speech”
I wouldn’t use one of the big 4 firms.
They are all fluff and no substance.
Maybe bts Rutten knows he is gone, and after the shenanigans of Sunday/Monday he has asked to be there for Hurley’s last game. Seems to have a good relationship with him, having an interim coach would distract even further from Hurley’s finale.
Just a theory.
A divided club leads to a divided team on the field. The more we hear about the off field conflicts the more I feel for the players.
Anyone care to unpack as I don’t have a subscription
It’s ■■■■. That’s all anyone needs to know.
OPINION
‘Rock bottom’: Inside the power struggle tearing Essendon apart
SWWNBN
Football columnist for The Age
August 20, 2022 — 5.00am
The most positive assessment of Essendon’s lot as it moves towards yet another barren football spring is that to truly move forward it had to hit rock bottom.
This is where the club sits today. Not the worst-performed, not the poorest and certainly not the least-supported but once again a victim of the messiah complex that has paralysed the club for decades — and certainly the messiest.
To think that Alastair Clarkson turned his back on all those blockbusters, probably more money and definitely more short-term upside in favour of North Melbourne. The Roos are not exactly a picture of stability but they are under the firm hand of a new president unafraid of showing her hand and who has transformed the Kangaroos from the perennial bridesmaids where recruiting big scalps is concerned.
David Barham, by contrast, looks not a little foolish. It’s difficult to recall a president launch his first public appearance in the job with an apology, but that’s how it was for the respected broadcasting executive on Friday. This coup might not have been all about Clarkson but the possible availability of the so-called greatest coach of the past 20 years drove last week’s dramatic board-room takeover and certainly for now defines the opening gambit of Barham’s leadership.
That, along with a humiliated coach, a disgruntled playing group not exactly bursting with leadership, a divided football department and an angry chief executive with a long-term contract and a diminishing power base.
The disappointed players made no secret of their disappointment in Barham this week and notably his failure to talk to Ben Rutten before he had approached Clarkson.
Essendon’s pursuit of Clarkson could have ended differently if the timing had not been so appalling. The truth is that sections of the club entertained the prospects of this big play at least two months ago and yet did not act, allowing the divisions to fester and North president Sonja Hood to gain the inside running.
Just how anyone could think that Rutten can come back from this and coach Essendon in 2023 defies logic and yet still, an albeit-apologetic Barham has left Rutten’s career in the balance.
An external review, too, should have come months ago, although it should not take an investigator from Deloitte to explain why Geelong are heading for their eighth preliminary final since 2011 and Essendon are not.
Essendon great Matthew Lloyd in recent days referred to the cultural issues plaguing the club. He might not agree, but the aforementioned messiah complex was never better demonstrated than by this week’s emerging campaign to reinstate James Hird as coach of the club. Barham will have to demonstrate significant resolve to control that push as it unrolls in coming days.
It is a campaign fuelled by a significant section of diehard Bombers but is now being driven by the club’s veteran list manager and recruiter Adrian Dodoro and his cohort, which includes Kevin Sheedy and Mark Harvey. Hird has not spoken publicly.
That there are people still holding senior roles at the club who remain so mired in the past defies logic. Hird was one of the greatest players the game has seen, but as senior coach he oversaw the most catastrophic era in the club’s history — from which it has not recovered. To reinstate him is unthinkable and only being referenced due to the crazy determination in the minds of some influential Bombers that he is still the answer.
Dodoro has emerged as a significant player in the in-house schism that has turned toxic in recent months. His fallout with football boss Josh Mahoney reflects just how much more difficult Rutten’s job must have been when two such pivotal figures lost faith in each other.
With Sheedy’s support, Dodoro has made his feelings on Mahoney more than clear. It is not known how Dodoro’s performance fared on paper in Mahoney’s review, which was conducted with oversight from football director Sean Wellman, but the long-time recruiter believes Mahoney has been after him for some time.
Should Xavier Campbell and Mahoney survive Barham’s external review — and that is not certain — then Dodoro definitely will not. Those relationships look irreparable.
Campbell remains steadfast in his view that Mahoney is the right man to oversee football and as recently as Thursday was still holding on to the belief that Rutten could coach the club next season should Clarkson choose — as he did — the Kangaroos.
Campbell would rightly say that there was unity across the four pivotal roles at the football club from former president Paul Brasher through to the CEO, football boss and senior coach. That the team rallied significantly under Rutten for a significant period midway through the season and that forces outside that leadership quartet failed to demonstrate patience and belief.
Unfortunately for Campbell he was unable to control those forces largely because of the split across the football operation but also because of the anti-Rutten noise coming from a section of senior players. Not to mention some dismal performances to conclude an unhappy season. Dissection of just how and why a coach loses his players is a fraught exercise but one consistent anti-coach view was that he had not formed the necessary relationships with enough of his players.
For all Campbell has achieved in his challenging time at Essendon, he has never managed to adequately transport the club into the modern professional era. The new facility might be the biggest and slickest and most advanced of all those based in Victoria but still the wealthy supporters and coterie groups remain semi-regular recalcitrants given far too much access to the inner workings of the club and misusing that access.
Too often stories emerge of player and coach divisions or reports of players dissatisfied with the line-up of their coaching group or classic football club frustrations that are not shut down but rather amplified by outside forces indulged because they are generous benefactors.
This is not something Clarkson would have entertained but Rutten lacked the influence to shut down. Campbell might have fallen out with his previous football boss Daniel Richardson and vice versa but the so-called powerful supporters delivering mixed messages to players was a shared frustration.
It was this mentality that led to Sheedy’s appointment to the board. It might be mean-spirited to dispute Essendon putting the legendary coach back on the payroll despite his strong allegiance to Greater Western Sydney, but to make him a director was an unnecessary appeasement.
Sheedy’s vote against Brasher last week carried Barham to the presidency, forcing an external review that now had the support of the majority of the board. But his occasionally messy weekly gig on Adelaide’s 5AA several days later suggested Clarkson would be a better fit for North Melbourne in part because he could potentially relocate the club to Tasmania.
This was in direct contravention of Barham’s ambition to make a bold play for Clarkson, which had its genesis long before August. Not to mention it would seem a contravention of board etiquette directed at another club. Sheedy was never a strong Rutten man and the two have no real relationship but once the senior coach lost the support of the four-time premiership mentor and now club director and ambassador, it was always going to be hard for him.
Holding his head high on Saturday night at the MCG if he coaches — as the club has insisted he will — will be tough, but Rutten has emerged dignified from the events of the week when that was not how it looked for him last Sunday.
And Barham? Having landed the club in this embarrassing position might well prove the inevitable starting point to finally reshape the under-performing Bombers. But to achieve that will require a long list of tough calls; calls that Essendon has consistently failed to make for more two decades. Over which time Clarkson simultaneously was evolving into the greatest coach in the competition.
Yeah nah we ■■■■■■ that up completely by how we played footy over the past 10 years. We are completely inconsistent. We are lazy, we are as soft as Sheedy’s marshmallows, we don’t like to do the hard work. Player after player that has come into this club have said how our training standards are poor. We have ongoing Injury problems every single year.
The last week is just another blip on the ongoing crap that our club has become.
Hopium. Love it!
They did in USSR
The ‘Club’ has not delivered on field in a very long time. Members are rightfully frustrated and have minimum standards they expect to see on field. I believe most wouldn’t be upset if Essendon was 7-14 but showed effort & a clear plan on the field.
My view the frustration stems from seeing the lack of an obvious defensive plan or a plan at all despite Rutten being in place for two years. One look at Collingwood and their change in gameplan over one summer and Essendon inability to install a gameplan over 2 pre-seasons seems even worse.
The way we played in the pre-season games and for the first half of the season showed no sign of any gameplan at all. This is on the coach. Hence the decision to wait until round 22 to have discussions regarding his performance was very poor by the Board.
Rutten might have a gameplan but clearly it doesn’t suit the playing list as over 2 years they have not been able to implement it. The great coaches align the gameplan to the playing list skills rather than applying another successful strategy to an existing playing list. All the best teams over the past 2 decades have played differently but played to the strengths of the players they have. Time to find a coach who recognizes our players strengths and puts in place a gameplan to maximize them.
Lol yes but Essendon is not a social collective…
Hmmm or maybe it is……
Sheedy, Hird, Harvey, Dodoro, board members, they all carry a sense of guilt over the Saga, and want there shot at redemption.
Thing is, is it about them, or whats best for the club?
We, the members, need to exercise our right to take control of the club. I am tired of the overlords squabbling and powerplays and undermining.
We need an EGM, a total board spill, and an open floor for questions to be answered honestly and openly. We need transparency. We need opposing factions within the club to make their alliances clear and make there pitch to the members.
Only then can we, the members, approve of the way forward.
It is the only way.
Your analysis is appreciated. Do you have a view on the roles assigned to the assistant coaches, whether it is allowing them to exercise their respective expertise?