PROCESS. The most overused, manipulated and ultimately meaningless word in the AFL dictionary.
Process. It is always referenced when a club heads to market to find a new coach. Carlton revealed its process to replace Michael Voss last Thursday, and now the countdown is on for Essendon.
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Processes are always pledged to be "exhaustive" and "thorough". The chosen candidate will be the perfect fit for not mere success, but, wait for it, "sustained success".
Processes sound good. But processes are still guesswork. They fail to identify successful AFL coaches more often than they find them. Just as even the most prepared people cannot possibly be fully ready for parenthood, there is never a guarantee that even the most diligent and rounded assistant coaches will successfully transition into senior coaching.
This is not to be taken as disparaging on the individuals, for clubs fail coaches more than coaches fail clubs, but for every process that unearthed storylines like Chris Scott, Damien Hardwick, Alastair Clarkson and Chris Fagan, there are multiple more which involved Rhyce Shaw, David Teague, Mark Neeld, Justin Leppitsch and David Noble outcomes. And again, this is directed at then-dysfunctional clubs and their processes, not those coaches.
Essendon has been dysfunctional since it understandably tip-toed around the exit of its equal-greatest coach Kevin Sheedy at the end of 2007, after a 27-year stint which produced four premierships and another two Grand Finals.
Bombers president Andrew Welsh, who a week ago today publicly announced Brad Scott had been sacked as Essendon coach, is now empowered with finding Essendon's seventh coach post-Sheedy.
"We are not ruling anyone in or anyone out," Welsh said on the day Scott was sacked. It was a line which adhered to standard AFL process, but more significantly it was a line which bought him time to deal with the Essendon Football Club's most vexed issue: James Hird.
Hird was the second coach tried by Essendon after Sheedy. Appointed after Matthew Knights and before (and again after) Mark Thompson, Hird now desperately wants another crack post-Scott, who had followed Ben Rutten and John Worsfold.
I will always associate Hird, and many others, with bringing down the Bombers via the drugs program of 2012-13, which led to his own suspension from the game in 2014 and to a 2016-season ban for 34 players caught up in it.
Hird, inarguably among the best three Bombers players ever, clearly contributed to the dysfunction at Essendon, whose obsession with its own people often presents to me as a cult more than a football club. Before Hird and Sheedy became the leading cult figures, Coleman and Reynolds (who like Sheedy also secured four flags as a coach) were.
Welsh played 162 matches for the Bombers. A former teammate and mate of his, Dean Solomon, was ordered off the board late year to become an assistant coach and is now the interim senior coach. Solomon is a great mate of Hird.
The mere mention of Hird's name in this coach race has already resulted in multiple candidates, from Ken Hinkley to Brett Montgomery, refusing to be part of a "process" to find Scott's replacement.
The optics would tell Welsh to stay away from Hird. A process influenced by non-Essendon people would likely do the same. But in logic that would make no sense if applied to any other club, Essendon may not properly be able to move forward without giving Hird another chance.
I wrote in this column last Tuesday that the Bombers re-installing Hird as coach would be "the most Essendon act, ever". A week later, and even factoring all the moving parts, and I maintain that.
Welsh is not answerable to anyone but Essendon people, and he has the business smarts to deal with this challenge. He is also well aware that adhering to industry-prescribed process for the past 10 years has got the Bombers nowhere.
To borrow the ultimate corporate maxim from iconic sportswear giant Nike: ignore the process, Andrew. Just Do It. Appoint Hird.