Clockwise from top left: Sacked football manager Dan Richardson, Ben Rutten, president Paul Brasher, CEO Xavier Campbell.

Essendon Football Club has been an unhappy place for a fair while, but as happens when there’s the occasional flicker of light on the field, the discontent had largely been kept from bubbling over. Until now.

A wretched season saw the convergence of several different strands of dissatisfaction.

Of players, most notably, of whom several have already opted out. Of different departments within the club, who got tired of the disconnect and attention focussed on the wrong areas. And, of course, the fans.

Too much spin, too many false dawns and too many changing narratives seemed to arouse what had been a largely passive supporter base, the Bombers’ limp finish of 13th with just one victory in their final 10 games the breaking point.

So the blood-letting has begun. Only a trickle initially, with incoming president Paul Brasher issuing a qualified mea culpa in a video statement to members, and the promise of a full, albeit internal review of the operation.

But on Thursday came the slicing open of a major artery in the sacking of football manager Dan Richardson.

Just days before the beginning of one of the most critical trade and player acquisition periods in the club’s history, it is a comment in itself that the club now acknowledges the extent of its crisis.

A bigger question now, though, is whether the removal of Richardson has dealt only with a symptom of the malaise, or the root cause. There are already concerns among insiders that, not for the first time, it is the former.

And of far more consequence for Essendon fans, is how this impacts on the position of senior coach Ben Rutten, about to take the reins in his own right after what turned out to be a spectacularly unsuccessful co-coaching arrangement with the departed John Worsfold.

The dynamics between the coach, the now former football manager Richardson and chief executive Xavier Campbell had shifted significantly in recent times.

Rutten and Richardson, his former colleague at Richmond who was instrumental in getting him to the club, had come to the realisation that as far as the list and immediate on-field aspirations were concerned, a “scorched earth” policy was required, not only in terms of names, but attitudes, the kerfuffle over the decision not to allow the retiring Tom Bellchambers a final game symbolic.

After three years in the job, Richardson had begun to challenge Campbell a lot more on the direction the football side of the operation was taking. He’d also played a key role in the recent re-signings of some of the club’s young guns. And the alignment of Richardson and Rutten was becoming obvious.

Where does this leave the coach? Or other Richardson appointments in assistant coaches Blake Caracella, Leigh Tudor and Cam Roberts, all on board this season? Or even the just-appointed Daniel Giansiracusa, another Richardson appointment, who made a point of thanking the football manager in his opening remarks to his new home?

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In a highly-political club, having just taken the reins in his own right, Rutten would be feeling a lot more vulnerable now than even a couple of days ago.

The obvious elephant in the room here now, though, in terms of Brasher’s review, is Campbell. Is Richardson’s removal a precursor to a similar fate for him? Or alternately, does it shore up his position with the new president and the Essendon board, Richardson just a sacrificial lamb in much the manner assistant coach Mark Neeld became in 2018?

What looms as a pivotal moment in the miserable past three years for the Bombers after some signs of life in 2017 is the removal of then football manager Rob Kerr for Richardson.

Kerr, who had already worked at Essendon previously, was a strong voice who challenged players and his chief executive alike. The Bombers in 2017 had clear direction on the field. It’s been palpably lacking since, along with accumulating evidence that the tail was wagging the dog far too frequently.

Not to mention a seeming revolving door of staff whose arrivals were overseen by Campbell. Neeld went two-and-a-half years ago. Neil Craig is also long gone. Ditto Guy McKenna. More recently, Luke Ball, who was heading up the club’s VFL program.

Perhaps the most costly misfire on the appointment front remains the decision to extend Worsfold as senior coach early in 2018 when there was little pressure to do so.
By mid-2019, Essendon had decided it wanted a new senior coach. But Worsfold was now contracted for 2020 as well. So it avoided the poor optics of an unnecessary premature payout by crafting a co-coaching arrangement that never looked anything more than clunky at best.

That’s a fair list of appointments which didn’t prove of any lasting benefit to the club, nor helped improve on-field performance. Indeed, in contrast they seem only to have helped create much confusion, players continually exposed to conflicting advice and direction, or several times changing tack after having only recently becoming comfortable with the course charted.

Why isn’t Campbell on shakier ground? Well, until this year’s drastic drop in membership, he’d delivered impressive results on the financial front. He’d soldiered on in the chief executive role after being thrown in at the deep end by former president Paul Little during the supplements saga.

And he plays the political game adeptly, having been able to generally have the club board acquiesce to his wishes. Essendon as a club has also played the political game expertly of late, further manipulating its constitution to leave a board of largely hand-picked directors.

Kevin Sheedy is now one of them. How much influence will he have on the direction of the football department now, having been kept at arms’ length for some time in his marketing role? Where does Brasher stand on Campbell? These are questions to which even those intimately involved with the operations and culture of the club still aren’t sure of the answers.

They, like the rest of an intrigued football world, will have to watch and wait for the next act of a club in crisis to play out. To a point, Essendon is at least no longer a club in denial. But acknowledging a problem is only the diagnosis. Just how far will the Bombers be prepared to go to administer the cure?