THIS is how the Essendon Football Club works.
It is an organisation perpetually stuck in a loop of obsession with those who have represented it at the highest levels. There has always been comfort in donning the red and black security blanket.
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The Bombers board's decision to sack Brad Scott on Monday night was justified, given he had managed just one win from his past 24 matches.
Club directors had readied themselves for that decision eight months earlier when president Andrew Welsh, who played 162 matches with the Bombers, last October oversaw the transferral of his ex-Bombers teammate and 2000 premiership player Dean Solomon off the board and into an assistant coach role.
Of course, only an Essendon person could properly oversee what the non-Essendon Scott was going to be doing in 2026, his fourth season in charge.
And of course, only an Essendon person could assist the club out of the Scott sacking, with Solomon on Tuesday appointed interim senior coach.
Alongside Welsh in that conference was Tim Roberts, who, like Solomon had been a mere board member at Essendon before being identified as the best candidate to replace Craig Vozzo as CEO.
"We are not ruling anyone in or anyone out," Welsh said on Tuesday when asked to outline his approach to identifying the permanent replacement for Scott.
It was the type of line offered dozens of times in similar media conferences by Welsh's peers. But of course, when that question and answer came on Tuesday, it was not as a reference to the merits of tried versus untried coaches, but simply a focus on one man: James Hird.
One of the greatest Essendon identities, four-time premiership coach Kevin Sheedy, then a Bombers director, publicly declared he wanted fellow great Essendon identity Hird to coach the Bombers on the October 2022 day that Scott had been unveiled as Ben Rutten's replacement.
Hird had been Bombers coach when the club introduced a drugs program which led to a season-long ban – in 2016 – for Bombers players. He has always maintained his and the players' innocence, but the saga is one from which Essendon has not been able to recover.
Scott was moved on, as Rutten, John Worsfold and Mark Thompson were before him, after the Hird debacle. Matthew Knights was sacked after a three-season stint post-Sheedy and pre-Hird.
Scott's decision on Monday last week to publicly handcuff Welsh and Roberts to the playing list strategy which had restricted his ability to produce wins may have been clever public messaging. But it ultimately increased the unease at board level and hastened his exit, 80 matches after then-president David Barham appointed him coach.
Barham's time in charge of Essendon was a debacle. Emerging from seven years as a club director into the position of president in late 2022 as a self-proclaimed "agent of some sort of change", Barham merely worsened this once-mighty club's plight. He very quickly rolled not only Paul Brasher as president, but Rutten as coach (and only after he forced him to coach one last match while he tried to convince Alastair Clarkson to join the Bombers), three other directors and CEO Xavier Campbell.
Welsh took over from Barham last year and in recent months he has made it known, when asked, that his relationship with Hird may not be as tight as it once was. But Welsh also said to The Age just six weeks ago: "We're of absolute belief that Brad will be our next premiership coach."
Opinions, plans, strategy and status can change quickly at Essendon.
Sheedy and Solomon have never deviated in their awe of Hird and their burning desire for him to return to the head coaching role at Essendon.
It really would be the most Essendon act, ever, to re-install Hird as coach.