James Heard interviews with Essendon, Tim Watson, Kane Cornes question potential coaching appointment

Essendon legend Tim Watson has warned the club against looking for a “savior” after James Hurd was interviewed for the vacant coaching job.

Hurd was one of four candidates to meet the club’s coaching sub-committee on Wednesday, a list that includes former Essendon teammate Dean Solomon, Melbourne assistant Adem Izeh and St Kilda assistant Brendan Laid.

News of Hurd’s meeting with Essendon was met with mixed reactions due to his role as both a club legend as a player and as a key figure in the doping scandal that brought the club to its knees.

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Watson, whose son Jobe was stripped of his 2012 Brownlow Medal as a result of the supplements program, said he would be “more than surprised” if Hird beat the rest of the candidates in Essendon’s coaching process.

“I’m not at all surprised that they would have interviewed him if he had put his hand up and said ‘yes, I want to be interviewed, I want to go through the process,'” he told SEN.

“Let’s say Essendon is broken, what will bring a club together will be success.

“It doesn’t have to come from James Hurd coaching Essendon Football Club to bring Essendon together. The club would have been united under Ben Rutten and John Worsfold had they been more successful.

“We don’t need a savior to come back to the Essendon Football Club and bring the Essendon Football Club together. We need someone who is able to come up with a plan of action that will lead to success and start building a successful team again.”

In an interesting wrinkle in the coaching process, either Hird or Solomon will likely want the other as an assistant if they win the job, according to The Age.

Unlike other candidates interviewed for the role, Hurd does not have extensive coaching experience, having been out of coaching since 2015, except for a half-year stint with the Giants earlier this year as an assistant.

Port Adelaide big Kane Corns said that should be a factor against him more than the rest of the supplements saga.

”The big thing for me isn’t necessarily the story of it, although that’s the circus part of it, it’s more the nuts and bolts of what it takes to coach a strong team and how quickly the game has moved strategically, the managerial side of things, the new demographics of players that are emerging, the management of the football club,” he told SEN.

Hird has had his time, says Tony Jones

“For him to be out of it for so long, I know some would say he dipped his toe back in the water this year, but I would think that the model for James Heard has to be the model for Michael Voss.

“You’re a coach, it doesn’t end up the way you’d hoped, you go to another club, you run the midfield and the management department, then you manage the coaches as a director and you’re in all aspects.

“James Hird hasn’t done the job, let’s put it bluntly.

“He hasn’t done the work to be a viable candidate for the Essendon coaching job. It’s nothing personal, it’s just reality.

“I’m surprised they agreed to sit down with him and I don’t think we’ll get too far.”

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