Ben Jacobs Tracks James Hird’s 2022 Essendon Near-Return

ben jacobs says James Hird came within a hair of reclaiming Essendon’s top job in September 2022, and that near-return still shadows the club nearly four years on. Brad Scott’s departure on Tuesday reopened the same old questions about whether Essendon has ever properly moved on from the supplements scandal and its chase for instant success.

James Hird at Essendon

Hird was not a fringe figure in that process. Kevin Sheedy was confident he would get the appointment in September 2022, and the former coach was close enough to the job that the club’s later instability still gets measured against it.

A few months before he missed out, Hird and Sheedy were the headline acts at Essendon’s sesquicentennial celebrations. Hird emerged through a thick plume of smoke at the MCG, while current players and old legends linked arms and formed a circle in the goal square. The club leaned hard into its past even as it tried to chart a new path.

Brad Scott’s North Melbourne Exit

Scott’s own history makes the contrast sharper. In 2019, when he left North Melbourne, Ben Buckley said, “Brad’s offer to step aside is nothing short of selfless and honourable – terms befitting his character,” and Scott said, “There’s nothing but blue sky for North,” three times. That exit was framed as orderly and respectful. His departure from Essendon on Tuesday was not.

He was not at the press conference announcing the end of his time at Essendon, and many people thought he was not the right fit and probably never had been. The selection panel that recommended him — Josh Mahoney, Andrew Thorburn, Jordan Lewis and Robert Walls — backed a coach who arrived burdened by the mistakes of previous regimes and a wretched run with injuries.

Essendon’s Unfinished Business

There was instability all around Scott, and the clarity, alignment and messaging over whether the club was actually rebuilding came far too late. Andrew Thorburn later became one of the shortest-lived CEOs in corporate history, another reminder of how unsettled the club’s leadership picture has been.

That is why Hird’s near-return still matters inside Essendon. The club’s identity remains tied to a quarter of a century ago, to the supplements scandal, and to a figure who almost reclaimed the top job in September 2022. Until that history stops surfacing every time the club changes direction, Essendon will keep judging new decisions against the same old one.