I’m always up for some Brad bashing but I wouldn’t at all be surprised if he was creating the appearance of a selfless decision (if Hepps does retire) when the reality is perhaps not quite that. Suspect captaincy was similar.
He does appear to manage Hepps very sensitively and I’m sure there are reasons for that.
AFL site
We can only hope
If Hep’s as good a bloke as he’s purported to be, he’ll voluntarily hang up the boots.
‘Nobody is bigger than the club.’
What do you suggest the club do? Pause all fan engagement?
I just wanted to pose this question to current essendon members because I’m genuinely curious about this aspect of the club. Do you guys feel that the club is engaging enough with its fans compared to previous seasons?
The reason I ask is because I support arsenal in the PL and years ago there was so much disconnect between the fanbase and the club. But ever since getting mikel arteta there’s been a cultural shift. Listening to his amazon prime videos, he talks to the players about transmitting the energy and passion in games to give the fans something to believe in. But also the arsenal hierachy started engaging with the fanbase a lot more and right now the club is united in a lot of ways which makes me so proud to see.
I genuinely believe that for us to be a strong club again, the club needs to interact more with the fanbase. I don’t know these board members well, but a lot of them seem to be quiet corporate types rather than people with the best interests of the club at heart, I could be absolutely wrong about that.
All I’ll say on that is club/fan relations tend to improve when the team are winning. I’m an AC Milan fan and prior to Pioli’s time at the club the fans were unhappy with the club and felt they weren’t being ‘listened to’…Win a league title and have some limited success in CL and the fans are happier!
I’m not sure the club did anything differently…
Winning shuts people up. The other problems still exist but are overlooked. Start losing and the other problems suddenly get mentioned.
I think it’s becoming a certainty isn’t it? I don’t think we need to pray to higher powers!
Yep. People say that want engagement. That’s not actually what you want (unless you are a child). You just want a good football team. Good engagement then follows organically due to goodwill and shared basking in triumphs between supporter base and club.
Thanks for that, so then we pretty much need a more committed squad of players that value winning. Think a lot of our guys are just mentally weak, it’s been another factor of why we just don’t see success. You can’t trust this playing group week in week out, coz you don’t know what you’re gonna get.
Ha ha!! I don’t think Essendon is anywhere near as good as it was years ago. It was best in the AFL, a leader and pioneer in sports fan engagement.
I do think they’ve improved slightly though, off a low base. I still think it’s only ‘ok’ so I’m not really giving them flowers… However they’ve introduced some decent insta content this year taking us into matchday which is reasonable stuff.
Was it?
Well said. Our Leadership is weak, hence why we can’t turn this club around.
Under Sheedy yes, but that was a long time ago.
Yep 
as others have mentioned, simply winning trumps all else.
look at richmond, when winning they did things like telling jokes at half time (we tried it and got mocked for obvious reasons), now 4 years on, if they were to continue that on now, how would it look/go ? about as well as it did for us.
apart from winning, the fans just want people at the club to be genuinely honest with them.
at present more and more supporters have either realised they are simply a monetary figure to the club, or are waking up to that fact.
the club is merely a propaganda/pr marketing spin organisation.
If they gave honest appraisals, and then backed it up with actions that matched their words, I reckon enough people would feel engaged with the club.
most however feel that the club just says what they think people want to hear, go about doing what they were doing before, with a new and different mouthpiece and coach, and there’s not much evidence that the vision of change they sold is actually happening or on the right track to happening.
by the sounds of it, arsenal said they’d do something, engaged with their supporters and then went out and did it.
we’ve said we want to change, gone out and tried to change with the exact same players, and other stakeholders and are sold to just be patient it’ll come together in a few years.
Fark arsenal and fark carlton.
