ESSENDON has to entertain appointing an untried coach.
 
In fact, it's the course the Bombers should take in 2016.
 
The fresh start the players yearn and deserve is unlikely to be found if the coach appointed needs to be convinced to join the club and become a senior coach.
 
When such wooing happens clubs can be seduced into accommodating the coach's needs and we know from bitter experience that is fraught with danger.
 
To succeed a coach needs a solid support team and a stable environment with a competent president, CEO and football manager to work in lockstep.
 
They also need leadership abilities, a bit of luck and a club always prepared to help them get better.
 
The argument that the club needs an experienced coach runs as follows:
 
 - You need someone with the requisite nous to manage all the people found in nooks and crannies around the club, from coterie group members to board members to long-time supporters.
 
- After all that Essendon has endured in the past three years, they need a steady hand at the ship.
 
- The players want someone at the helm without a skerrick of self-doubt.
 
Those first two assets can be found in any candidate with the right stuff.
 
And any appointee at a new club will have a degree of self-doubt, if not in their ability to do the job then their willingness to do the hardest of hard yards.
 
That's the doubt that always lingers over experienced people brought back into a role they fell out of love with.
 
If things start poorly, will they stay engaged?
 
The Bombers need the right person, someone hungry for the position that is prepared and confident they can fulfil the role and take them out of this era forever.
 
John Barker, Scott Burns, Stuart Dew, Simon Lloyd and Blake Caracella are five people who immediately come to mind as options for the club.
 
Think of one of those names sitting down as the new coach of Essendon, potentially with a coaching director or a football manager with Geoff Walsh, Neil Balme, Chris Fagan, Chris Bond or Steven Hocking's experience and nous supporting them.
 
That is a recipe for a club embarking on a new direction with new energy.
 
CEO Xavier Campbell will be giving the board an update on the ongoing review on Thursday.
 
He will also be able to give them an indication of the candidates in the market and how closely they might fit the club's new direction.
 
That's the only justification for the ill-conceived approach last week to John Worsfold that, despite reasonable criticism, must have found an audience.
 
It means Essendon has all the information it needs to keep progressing, having in Campbell's words "met and had positive discussions with a number of high quality candidates". 


If the Bombers bring in a coach purely because of their previous senior experience at another club they will immediately seem like a club that needs saving.
 
The coaching saviour era, if it ever existed, is over.
 
This club can't throw their responsibilities to one man to solve.
 
They need to find the right people at every level to make an appointment work as well as Ken Hinkley, Alan Richardson, Luke Beveridge, Adam Simpson and the late Phil Walsh.
 
Add in the fact the past four premierships were won with coaches who were untried when appointed to the club who won the flag and you see the formula for success is not just about the coach, it's about the football program they shape.  
 
Only a proper process using the selection panel to its full extent will give the Bombers a chance at finding their man.