BEFORE Chris Fagan finally got his shot as a senior coach in 2016, the now two-time Brisbane premiership coach has revealed that Essendon once explored a move for him, almost 15 years after Fremantle first showed interest in him.
In Return of the Pride, a new six-part podcast series that tracks the Lions' rise back to the top of the AFL, Fagan says he was in the mix for the senior coaching job at the Bombers in 2015, but withdrew from the race when it became clear John Worsfold was the frontrunner.
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The flirtation with the Bombers came 14 years after the Dockers had approached Fagan about coaching Fremantle, who eventually appointed Chris Connolly to the top job.
Having enjoyed success as an assistant coach and football manager at Melbourne and then Hawthorn, Fagan felt his chance to become a senior coach had passed him by before Neale Daniher – who he'd worked with at the Demons – approached him about the vacant job at the Bombers following James Hird's departure at the end of 2015.
But when Fagan learned the Bombers' hierarchy had flown to Perth to meet with Worsfold, he withdrew his interest.
"When Neale was involved in helping Essendon find a coach, I'd agreed to go and have a chat to them," Fagan recalls in Return of the Pride, which premiered on AFL.com.au on Tuesday.
"And then it came out in the news that they'd flown to Perth to meet John Worsfold, and I rang up the bloke and said, 'sounds like you're going after John Worsfold, I'm not going to waste my time'. So I didn't. So that's as close as I got.
"I didn't think it was ever going to happen, and I wasn't spending my life worrying about whether it would or it wouldn't. I was happy being the football manager at Hawthorn. We were a successful footy club. Life was good."
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It was the second time Fagan had been approached about becoming a senior coach following overtures from the Dockers in 2001.
"When Fremantle appointed Chris Connolly, there was a little bit of interest in me by them. That was more because Cameron Schwab was the CEO there ... he was part of the group that appointed me to Melbourne in the first place. So there was a little bit of a flicker there."
Fagan says the first approach from the Lions in 2016 came "out of the blue", adding he initially doubted whether they were "fair dinkum" about appointing him to replace Justin Leppitsch in the top job.
"I'd only met Swanny (Lions CEO Greg Swann) once or twice and I'd never had a conversation with him," he says. "We had no real relationship, nothing. And then I just get a call from him out of the blue saying, 'would you be interested in coaching the Brisbane Lions?'. And I was a bit surprised by that.
"In my heart, I'd always hoped that maybe I might be able to get a chance somewhere, but I figured my days were up. I was 55 ... (I thought I) was going to be a football manager for the rest of my life now, and that's going to be it.
"I was very shocked when I got that call. I even wondered how fair dinkum he was, because I know sometimes (clubs) just try and beef up the list of candidates to make it look like they did the world's greatest process. And I didn't actually want to be a name on a list. So I said to him ... 'I might be interested, but I can't come and be interviewed by you until Hawthorn's season is over'. I thought if he's fair dinkum, he won't mind (waiting but) if he's just trying to beef his numbers up, that'll annoy him because it'll hold his process up.
"(But he said) 'That's fine, mate. Whenever Hawthorn is finished, we'll come and talk to you'. '(I thought) maybe they're fair dinkum, maybe they are interested'.
Return of the Pride launched on Tuesday, March 10 with the first two episodes. Subscribe now on your favourite podcast platform to ensure you don't miss an episode