The Essendon Bombers have made a high-stakes coaching change, cutting ties with senior coach Brad Scott just weeks into the 2026 Australian Football League season following a brutal slump in on-field performance. The decision comes after the club secured only a single win across Scott’s final 24 matches, a stretch that spans the end of the 2025 campaign and the opening weeks of 2026. Almost immediately after Scott’s dismissal was announced, former Essendon coach and club legend James Hird emerged as a fan-favorite candidate to return to the top job – a position Hird held more than a decade ago before his resignation in the wake of the club’s infamous supplements scandal.
In comments to reporters on Monday, Essendon president Andrew Welsh, a former teammate of Hird’s, declined to give a definitive answer on whether the club legend would be in the running for the vacant role, stopping short of both confirming and ruling him out entirely. “I haven’t spoken to Hird, no. We’re not ruling anyone in or anyone out of this. I am sure that there will be a lot of people interested in this role,” Welsh told media. The Essendon chief added that the club will first lay out clear criteria for the characteristics and qualifications it wants in its next senior coach, before narrowing down the pool of potential candidates.
Hird, who was a finalist for the Essendon senior coaching job back in 2022 before the board ultimately selected Brad Scott, has remained active in Australian rules football in recent years, currently serving in a coaching role with Port Melbourne in the Victorian Football League (VFL), the top feeder competition for the AFL.
To steer the club through the upcoming transition period, Essendon has appointed club great Dean Solomon as interim senior coach. The appointment follows Solomon’s move from the club’s board of directors to an assistant coaching role in the pre-season, a shift that fueled speculation the club was already planning for Scott’s dismissal. Welsh rejected those claims outright in Monday’s press conference.
The Essendon president also pushed back on narratives that the club was determined to fill the role with a so-called “old Essendon” figure – a person with deep ties to the club’s history, along the lines of Welsh and Solomon himself. While Welsh emphasized that he values the passion and institutional knowledge that former Essendon players bring to the table, he noted that the club is open to any qualified candidate regardless of their past connection to the Bombers.
That said, Welsh pointed to multiple recent successful examples of former players returning to lead their old AFL clubs, arguing that when the right candidate is a former club great, the arrangement can deliver strong results. “I look at other clubs, respectfully Sam Mitchell has gone back to Hawthorn and doing an amazing job,” Welsh said. “I look at Justin Longmuir over at Fremantle, Josh Carr has gone back to Port Adelaide. I think there’s really good history around players going back to clubs and the right people for those groups going to those clubs. I don’t shy away from Essendon people being great people and I want great people – Essendon people – to continually be involved in the footy club.”
Essendon’s coaching change marks the second high-profile AFL vacancy in just a matter of weeks, coming after Carlton senior coach Michael Voss stepped down abruptly earlier this month. It also coincides with a search for a new coach for the AFL’s upcoming expansion club in Tasmania. When asked if the timing of those other vacancies factored into Essendon’s decision to move on Scott now, Welsh said the club did not consider that timeline at all when making the call. “That didn’t come into our consideration at all surrounding this decision,” he confirmed.