Inside Dons\u2019 astonishing 6-week Scott backflip \u2026 and how \u2018asterisk\u2019 finished him<\/a><\/p>\n‘Not in consideration at all | 23:13<\/p>\n
Asked directly if he\u2019d spoken to Hird, Welsh said he hadn\u2019t. But when asked if he intended to speak to Hird, Welsh told reporters: \u201cWe\u2019re not ruling anyone in or anyone out of this.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m sure that there\u2019ll be a lot of people interested in this role. When we set the criteria for our next senior coach for what we believe is going to be the right characteristics, we will then move on from there to look at what that next senior coach is.\u201d<\/p>\n
One of Welsh and Hird\u2019s former teammates, Dean Solomon, will serve as the club\u2019s interim coach for the rest of the 2026 season.<\/p>\n
Essendon interim coach Dean Solomon. Picture: Michael KleinSource: News Corp Australia<\/p>\n
A long-time assistant coach with stints at the Dockers, Suns and Giants, Solomon went for the Bombers senior job four years ago that Scott eventually landed. He was elected to Essendon\u2019s board in December 2024, stepped down abruptly in October 2025 \u2013 one month after his former teammate Andrew Welsh was appointed the club\u2019s president \u2013 and joined the Bombers\u2019 coaching panel.<\/p>\n
Welsh said Solomon would be an \u201coutstanding caretaker\u201d coach.<\/p>\n
Asked about Solomon\u2019s chances of landing the senior coaching gig full-time, Welsh said: \u201cI\u2019m not ruling anyone in or out.<\/p>\n
\u201cDean has an opportunity standing in now as the interim coach. He\u2019s got a very close connection with all the players, but again that process hasn\u2019t been defined and we\u2019re not ruling anyone in or anyone out.\u201d<\/p>\n
‘I can see where the club is heading’ | 06:11<\/p>\n
Asked if he had intentions to bring \u201cold Essendon back\u201d, Welsh said: \u201cI love the passion of Essendon supporters. I love the history that our supporters talk about, our past players and administrators. But by no way means is our decisions around bringing \u2018old Essendon people\u2019 back as an operation to get the Essendon Football Club moving again \u2013 that is not in consideration for us at all.<\/p>\n
\u201cI hear a lot around \u2018old Essendon\u2019, \u2018new Essendon\u2019, \u2018boys club\u2019. I look at other clubs that, respectfully, Sam Mitchell\u2019s gone back to Hawthorn and doing an amazing job, I look at (Justin) Longmuir over in Fremantle, (Josh) Carr has gone back to Port Adelaide. So I think there\u2019s some really good history around players going back to clubs and the right people for those groups going to those clubs.<\/p>\n
Bombers sack Brad Scott! | 08:34<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t shy away from Essendon people being great people \u2013 and I want great people, Essendon people, continuing to be involved in the footy club.\u201d<\/p>\n
Welsh said he believed \u201cevery player on our list, from an age demographic (viewpoint), should be playing in our next premiership\u201d.<\/p>\n
Despite the revolving door of Essendon senior coaches since Kevin Sheedy\u2019s departure in 2007, Welsh said guiding the Bombers was \u201can extremely attractive job for a coach coming in\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ll go back to our list of players and the overall strength and size of our football club,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI can\u2019t make comment on previous coaches and decisions that were made previous to this one, but I\u2019m confident we are going to continue to move forward and we\u2019ll find the right person for this group to get the most out of them.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Bombers president Andrew Welsh has refused to rule out club champion James Hird as a coach contender, but…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":694996,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[560],"tags":[338985,638,107267,64,63,689,55,639,146722,3423,338869,119661,338981,159949,51355,696,3239,241386,6173,338986,338983,321687,25297,143664,11231,1119,667,2105,6086,338984,48340,86147,647,7198,677,6082,12936,48868,338982,1124,85,338856,660],"class_list":["post-694995","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-afl","tag-addresses-chances","tag-afl","tag-andrew-welsh","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-australia-and-new-zealand","tag-australian-football-league","tag-australianfootballleague","tag-ben-rutten","tag-ben-waterworth","tag-blood-options","tag-board-member","tag-bombers-president","tag-boss-hits","tag-boys-club","tag-brad-scott","tag-carlton-blues","tag-club-champion","tag-club-legend","tag-coach-contender","tag-coach-james","tag-coaching-panel","tag-coaching-role","tag-dean-solomon","tag-essendon-bombers","tag-football-club","tag-footy-club","tag-getty-images-inc","tag-interim-coach","tag-interim-coach-dean","tag-james-hird","tag-kevin-sheedy","tag-melbourne","tag-michael-willson","tag-oceania","tag-port-adelaide","tag-sam-mitchell","tag-senior-coaching","tag-senior-job","tag-south-australia","tag-sports","tag-supplements-program","tag-victoria"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/694995","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=694995"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/694995\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/694996"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=694995"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=694995"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=694995"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/1779017096_680_poster-fallback.png\"\/)
<\/p>\n