Well, Essendon certainly don't look like the big attractive club do they? In my lifetime they have only been a successful club during the period with Sheedy at the helm, the rest of the time they haven't been great.
I doubt they will learn from this but the best course of action would be to get a genuine external review going to really root out their problems. An internal review will not help as it will avoid all the issues which impact on internal power brokers.
Bringing Hird back would be very silly. In terms of Rutten what they need is an honest assessment of whether he is a decent coach, it is hard to assess given the club is a mess. I just don't think Rutten is their problem.
Someone needs to go to Essendon and convince them that their playing list really is not going to get them into the top 4, let alone contending for a flag. One revealing comment a month or two ago on the Real Footy podcast, they talked about Essendon's list and said it was a good list and the usual crap about how they should be winning more games, but the revealing comment was that there were no star players at Essendon. I think that is true, and you always need a couple of really top level players to be in contention.
Clarkson has been smart here, I imagine when he talked to Essendon they said they have a list close to contending, if only they could get a super coach in, and Clarkson figured he didn't want to work for people who are delusional.
DS
