and his diagnostic pitch to the club hierarchy was that if they wanted an immediate rise to the top and believed all was hunky-dory, they should appoint someone else.
Under Scott, the Bombers are seeking to break that cycle of high hopes and dashed dreams, which has invariably ended with a politically pressured board sacking the coach. One cannot blame Scott for declining to set himself up to fail. The aspiration for the coaches must be that they are difficult to play, every single week, and that they improve, individually and as a team.I would venture that this uncertainty about Essendon’s capabilities is a product of uncertainty about the capability of their younger players, and especially the two-to-five-year players who were picked relatively early in the draft.
More than three years later, we have little idea of what Nik Cox , Zach Reid and, to a lesser degree, Archie Perkins can achieve in the AFL. Cox and Reid have been injured for long stretches, while Perkins has shown flashes of real talent without graduating to consistency.