Wagging the Cat

Regular readers will know that AussieRulesBlog hasn’t been totally convinced that the smoke around the appointments of James Hird and Mark Thompson at Essendon doesn’t obscure a little spark or two.

Of course, Thompson’s situation walking away from a contract to coach Geelong and his fairly public falling out with his star player, Gary Ablett Jnr, mean that there’s a lot more media miles to be wrung out yet.

Nevertheless, we wondered about this quote from young ‘Gazza’:

"Rather than just trying to be a coach, he [Thompson] was a very controlling person, trying to run the medical department, the contract negotiations, and if it wasn't his way, it was nobody's way."

We know we don’t always have the right end of the stick here at AussieRulesBlog Central, but we’ve been pretty much of the opinion that if the club is playing crap footy, it’s the senior coach’s neck which is on the chopping block.

Why then would the senior coach not want to have the medical department running in sync with his own ideas?

And surely, even at the “Do we want this bloke or not?” level, the coach has to have some say in contracts.

We can only hope that Bluey McKenna remembers to check with Gazza before he announces any decisions.