![](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/poster-fallback.png\"\/)
<\/p>\n
LEFT-FIELD CANDIDATE REVEALED IN BOMBERS COACHING RACE<\/p>\n
As Essendon\u2019s vision for their next head coach becomes clearer, a new name has emerged from left-field to throw their hat in the ring for the vacancy.<\/p>\n
Midweek Tackle\u2019s Corbin Middlemas exclusively revealed Tuesday night to Fox Footy that Adelaide\u2019s Director of Coaching Murray Davis has been sounded out by the Bombers as one of up to 10 candidates.<\/p>\n
Davis was a long-time assistant at Brisbane before departing the club in October 2024 after their premiership, where he held roles as a strategist, as well as a line coach both in defence and attack.<\/p>\n
Murray Davis is seen during an Adelaide Crows training session at the MCG on May 16, 2025.Source: Getty Images<\/p>\n
\u201cMy understanding is the Bombers have cast the net quite wide here, from people of various and different backgrounds,\u201d Middlemas said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey\u2019re going to interview six to 10 different people in the initial stage, and then try and narrow that down at a later point. <\/p>\n
\u201cMurray\u2019s a very polite gentleman, and understandably wasn\u2019t keen to participate in the broader debate to confirm or deny any of this.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy understanding is though, that catch-up will take place later this week. He will speak to the Essendon Football Club for the first time as part of that process.\u201d<\/p>\n
Midweek Tackle panellist Jon Ralph added: \u201cEveryone at Adelaide is absolutely wowed by this bloke. He is an extraordinary people person, and had an influence from the top to the bottom (at the Crows).\u201d<\/p>\n
Prior to his time at Springfield with the Lions, Davis was prominent as a coach in both the Northern Territory and Queensland.<\/p>\n
\u2018COMPLETELY RANDOM RESULTS\u2019: \u2018GLITCH\u2019 THAT ENDED AFL\u2019S FAILED $1M EXPERIMENT<\/p>\n
A technology \u201cglitch\u201d that threw up \u201ccompletely random\u201d results during AFLW matches has been revealed as the major reason why the AFL has dumped its ball chip technology for 2026.<\/p>\n
The AFL earlier this month announced it\u2019d ditched the smart ball tracking technology for the upcoming AFLW season and replaced it with a vision-based system, which will align with the AFL competition.<\/p>\n
Speaking on Fox Footy\u2019s Midweek Tackle on Tuesday night, CODE Sports reporter Lauren Wood explained why ball chip approach had been ditched.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve spoken to a lot of people over the last 48 hours as to what the sticking point was and why they shelved that technology after just two years,\u201d Wood told Midweek Tackle.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is a venture that has cost the AFL well over $1 million. There was a lot of reticence to put an actual figure on it, which I think goes to show exactly how much it was.<\/p>\n
\u201cEssentially it was a glitch, for want of a better term, that sat within the technology. This was something that was experienced globally \u2013 leagues like the NFL have looked at this technology as well \u2013 so this wasn\u2019t just unique to Australian Rules football where it would sporadically and completely out of the blue record contact to the ball.<\/p>\n
\u201cEssentially the ball would be sitting still on the ground, the ball could be in flight \u2013 and it records either a touch by a hand or a touch to a post \u2026 Nobody was able, in that two-year period, to work out exactly why \u2013 which is essentially why it\u2019s been shelved.\u201d<\/p>\n
“Not tolerated” Razor dissects ump abuse | 02:35<\/p>\n
While the smart ball technology was rarely called upon, there was an infamous incident in 2024 when Gold Coast\u2019s Jamie Stanton appeared to snap the cleanest of goals against Collingwood \u2013 only for the goal to be overturned by ball chip tech. The Suns ultimately lost the game by three points.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt just goes to show how far back the AFL became aware of these issues,\u201d Wood said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey\u2019ve clearly changed tack very firmly \u2013 \u2018pivoted\u2019 was the word Laura Kane used today when I put questions to her as to why the ball tracking had been officially wiped form the AFLs arsenal. They are firmly in on vision \u2013 and you can see why.\u201d<\/p>\n
AFLW boss Laura Kane told reporter on Tuesday: \u201cWe had a couple of issues with the ball chip and we just wanted more certainty.\u201d<\/p>\n
CODE Sports reporter Jon Ralph said it was a \u201cfairly expensive glitch\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cPeople have told me the horror stories of it being in-play last year in the AFLW and really senior AFL executives just saying: \u2018This is just not working,\u2019\u201d Ralph told Midweek Tackle.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think the deal was up to five years, clearly it\u2019s been pulled short. <\/p>\n
\u201cI love the fact the AFL has spent some money. It clearly didn\u2019t work and clearly there\u2019s another solution coming through with those Sony cameras from Round 24.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut if you\u2019ve got a solution like that just throws up completely random results, it doesn\u2019t seem like the perfect solution to me.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A Fox Footy commentator has exclusively revealed a fresh name in the Essendon coaching mix, while the \u201cglitch\u201d…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":815364,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[43,44,85,41,39,42,40],"class_list":["post-815363","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-sports","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/815363","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=815363"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/815363\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/815364"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=815363"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=815363"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=815363"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}