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.
David Barham speaks to the media on Friday.Credit:Getty Images
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.
Coach Ben Rutten at Essendon training on Friday.Credit:Getty Images
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.
James Hird working as an assistant coach with Greater Western Sydney.Credit:Getty Images
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.
Essendon football boss Josh Mahoney.Credit:Getty Images
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.
