Why safe choices won’t stop his AFL return
The strangest and most fascinating conversation I had with James Hird was about convincing cocaine farmers to grow cocoa beans.
It was around 10 years ago and not long after Hird retired from football; The protracted drugs scandal had finally squeezed every last bit of Essendon’s players’ resolve and ability to coach them.
While the Court of Arbitration for Sport had not yet delivered its final, crushing verdict on The Saga, as survivors call it, the club and coach had agreed to part ways, leaving Hird both exhausted and overcome with manic energy.
He needed a dedicated purpose; A goal far removed from football.
Hird’s big idea, developed with entrepreneurial friends he made while studying for an MBA during his year of AFL-imposed exile, was to travel to Colombia and find villagers willing to stop growing coca plants for the cartel and switch to the increasingly scarce staple of chocolate.
A detailed explanation of soil types and labor policies in Colombia has arrived.
The plan suddenly seemed crazy.
This evoked images of Hird, machete in hand, hacking his way through the Colombian jungle like a young Michael Douglas. Romanticizing Stone, We embark on a reckless and potentially deadly mission to find the only people in the world who have no idea about Stephen Dank’s chemistry or Jobe Watson’s Brownlow.
I’m the same age as Hird. As I listened to him on the phone, I remember wondering how I would react at home if I came home one day and told the newspaper that I had quit my job and flown to Central America to become the next Willy Wonka.
The craziest part of this story—and the reason I’m sharing it with you—is that Hird did exactly what he said he would do. He went to Colombia. He met with villagers who worked for Pablo Escobar. He came home with chocolates.
It’s worth keeping Hird’s picture in the woods as you read about his chances of coaching Essendon again in the coming days and weeks.
The idea of Hird being reappointed as senior coach seems as crazy as the business plan he drew up on the phone that day.
It’s almost 11 years since Hird’s previous tenure at Essendon ended with a 112-point rout of Adelaide at what we then knew as the Etihad Stadium. This was the heaviest loss of Hird’s entire coaching career; A career spanning fewer than 90 games, a full season suspension and the most devastating drugs scandal in Australian sporting history.
Hird had never coached before his appointment as Essendon’s senior coach in 2010. In fact, he was recruited to learn on the job, with former premiership captain and successful Geelong coach Mark Thompson returning to the club as his on-field mentor.
In 2012, Dank was still learning when he moved into a basement office in Windy Hill and began injecting players with substances that may have contained banned substances, though no one could say for sure.
The last time I heard of Dank, he had left an anti-ageing clinic in Darwin with a warrant out for his arrest and was back in Melbourne supplying his products to gym addicts in South Yarra. That was a few years ago, but if he believes his own bullshit he won’t age a day.
The gaps in Hird’s coaching CV have been well documented by commentators with a better connection to the game than I do. That doesn’t mean he can’t coach.
During his time at Essendon, particularly during the 2013 season that was overshadowed by the Blackest Day in Sport and the resulting drugs scandal, he showed enough to show that he had that intangible quality that all good coaches have: the ability to get more out of a team than the sum of its parts. Michael Malthouse stated this week that Hird, like almost every coach, will be better than his first senior job in the second round.
For all the reasons stated above, it would be another thing if Hird could convince the Essendon board that he is the best candidate of all potentially available coaches to be entrusted with the toughest job in football. The club’s conclusion in this regard is not based on any logic.
Which brings us back to the forest.
Towards the end of the drugs scandal, I interviewed former Essendon chairman Paul Little, who led the club through its fight against the AFL and the Australian Sports Anti-Doping Authority and who tearfully accepted Hird’s offer to resign in 2015.
Little is a tough-as-nails businessman who makes his money in trucking, logistics and real estate development. He admired Hird and was distracted by Hird, whose singular focus was not always aligned with that of his club.
“Complex, driven, stubborn and talented,” Little told me at the time. “He may be selfish. I accused him of that. But he is moral.
“You can’t help but get the feeling that if you cross the Hird’s path, you won’t go unnoticed. It doesn’t matter who you are. They are fiercely focused on what they believe in.”
James Hird believes he is the best man to coach Essendon and he is not alone. If Caroline Wilson, these pages’ answer to Maggie Haberman, is after the money, then Little is using the influence he has at Essendon, along with Kevin Sheedy and others, to get Hird back in business.
There is a strong, emotional push among some Essendon fans to see Hird return. This may seem absurd to people who have no connection with the bombers, but the will of the mafia can be a very powerful thing.
But the most powerful force in all of this is Hird’s will. During his playing days, he was strong enough to bend the bow of a tumbling ball in flight. When he was a coach, he was powerful enough to divide a football club into two. She’s strong enough to convince him that he can pull it together after all these years.
He is the author of Chip Le Grand. Straight DopeA Walkley-winning account of the Essendon and Cronulla drugs scandals, published by Melbourne University Press.
Chip Le Grand leads our state politics reporting team. He had previously served as the newspaper’s chief correspondent and was a journalist with 30 years of experience.Connect via email.
