MARK McVeigh's message to his players was clear. Get ready to do your homework.

"I do want them to be brave. I do want them to play with flair. But we need to fix up our team defence," the new Essendon coach said at his announcement press conference on Tuesday, as the Bombers' full squad watched on inside the Hangar.

"I've coached team defence for a long period of time so it'll be a system-based team defence. We've got to go to work on that.

"Our players will understand that they're going to enjoy their break, which they absolutely should, but they need to come back prepared physically and ready to learn, because the system that we'll put in place, you need to understand. Otherwise, you get found out.

"When we get all three phases going in the right direction, Essendon will fly."

The Bombers are based a short walk from the airport but they have not touched the sky in generations.

But they have banked on McVeigh to get them airborne once more after the club's worst season in its long and illustrious history. Their two-win campaign saw them claim their second wooden spoon in more than 90 years, saw them sack coach Brad Scott mid-year and go on a three-month hunt to find their replacement.

They landed on McVeigh, a former teammate of president Andrew Welsh and a groomsman at his wedding.

"We played together for 10 years so you can't hide away from that relationship," Welsh said.

"But our members wanted us to put a process together that found the best candidate and we had external input as part of that process and a panel of five who formed their own view independently around who they thought was the best coach for the football club. That was a unanimous view from there."

That was ahead of club champion James Hird, who Welsh called on Monday at 6pm to inform him he had been unsuccessful in his attempts to return to the club. By then Hird had already known, having congratulated McVeigh the previous night on his Footy Furnace program following AFL.com.au revealing that McVeigh was set to fly to Melbourne and land the job on Monday.

Cameras waited for McVeigh at Melbourne Airport on Monday to catch a glimpse of the Sydney assistant on his way, but the Bombers had booked him on a flight to land at Avalon Airport to avoid the spotlight.

On his flight from Sydney on Monday was Charlie Curnow's dad David, who he knew from the Swans but hoped didn't spot him on his way to a new job, but McVeigh got off the flight and was picked up by Welsh, who lives in coastal Victoria, and taken to the club's board meeting where he was rubberstamped for the job.

Jobs don't get much tougher than this Bombers role. Kevin Sheedy, Matthew Knights, Hird, Mark Thompson, John Worsfold, Ben Rutten and Brad Scott have all held full-time coaching jobs at the Bombers since their last finals win in 2004. McVeigh, who played in that game, didn't call for patience from Essendon fans but alignment as they embark on more years of a long rebuild.

When asked how many more years of pain are ahead for one of the competition's youngest teams, which looks likely to lose ex-skipper and best player Zach Merrett to Hawthorn, McVeigh was straight to the point.

"I don't like to talk about pain. I think today is about a new era. Our playing group should feel excited. There is a significant amount of pressure that comes with playing with Essendon. We know that. We'll embrace that. We'll embrace what comes at us. But we need to understand if our members and supporters are walking through the gates of the MCG or Marvel Stadium or travelling to Adelaide, they know we're going to compete," he said.

He said he has "a list of assistants" he will speak to in coming weeks as the club prepares for a full slate of new staff, but that he hopes interim coach Dean Solomon remains a member of the coaching group. He also wants Hird to be a part of it.

"He's certainly on the top of my list. There's no doubt about that," McVeigh said.

McVeigh departs the Swans after the club's rockiest week in its history following the Pullman Hotel saga that saw five players suspended for the rest of the season and a Victoria Police investigation underway.

Swans chairman Andrew Pridham contacted the Bombers late last week to talk through the case and to reassure them of McVeigh's candidacy, with the club informing McVeigh on Saturday evening he had landed the job. The next day he coached his final game as the backline coach with the Swans, an emotional afternoon for the club and an emotional moment for McVeigh.

He said he was "absolutely shocked" at the Swans scandal, but that he had always intended to depart immediately if he won the Essendon job.

"The dialogue with (Swans football boss) Leon Cameron and (coach) Dean Cox was pretty clear throughout this process if I was to win it. We know the enormity of the job," he said.

The enormity of the role was on show in a significant announcement inside the Bombers' Tullamarine headquarters, with three separate rounds of applause from the crowd of staff and players. Already on Monday night McVeigh spent an hour discussing list management with list boss Matt Rosa, who has spent the past three months speaking to players and trying to get in front of others without a coach, and for the rest of Tuesday and Wednesday was to be involved in exit meetings with the playing group.

McVeigh was at Essendon in 2000, when it last won a premiership, but didn't make the 22 for that Grand Final win over Melbourne. A return to that stage remains a long way off but he has made clear his priorities.

"In three years' time we should be tracking in the direction that we all want to be, and that's towards finals. But there's some significant challenges with that," he said.

"We're going to be a young team even next year. For us, we need to make sure that those players that hopefully come through the draft that come into our footy club, and the players that are here now, continue to be educated.

"They're going to go to work on their footy IQ. They're going to get back in the classroom and they're going to learn. I'm really confident in the group that we've got and we'll add to it and bring in some people if we can and surround them with great support."