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Graham is the only candidate that advanced to the final round of interviews for both the Bombers and Blues vacancies.<\/p>\n
And Schofield, who worked Graham with at the Eagles, says his former assistant coach should get the Essendon gig as the most qualified contender.<\/p>\n
\u201cJaymie Graham should be the man getting this job,\u201d Schofield said on Fox Sports News\u2019 AFL Tonight.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s an assistant coach at the best side in the competition. He\u2019s run pretty close to a couple of senior coaching roles in his time including the Collingwood job. <\/p>\n
\u201cWhat he\u2019s been able to do with Fremantle over a number of years and their forward line. You\u2019d have to look at their development and the way they play as a pretty good forward line in the competition. <\/p>\n
\u201cAnd he\u2019s taken charge of West Coast and Fremantle (as caretaker coach).\u201d<\/p>\n
Will Schofield says Jaymie Graham should be Essendon\u2019s next coach (Photo by Sarah Reed via Getty Images)Source: Getty Images<\/p>\n
It comes after there\u2019s been a groundswell of support for Hird to return to Essendon, while Solomon and McVeigh, like president Andrew Welsh, are also ex-Bombers players.<\/p>\n
But Schofield questioned the notion of bringing back an Essendon person.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think (Graham\u2019s) the man for the job, but it\u2019ll probably go to someone connected with Essendon in some way shape or form. We\u2019ll have to see if they have the rigour to go outside the four walls of the Essendon footy club,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n
\u201cBecause I don\u2019t know if that\u2019s been overly helpful over the last 25 years.\u201d <\/p>\n
The Bombers are 1-8 under Solomon including an average losing margin of 52 points to arguably go backwards since he replaced Brad Scott in May. <\/p>\n
It came after Solomon moved from Essendon\u2019s board to its coaching staff this year.<\/p>\n
Walsh responds to future of Josh Fraser | 09:04<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was reported that he was the president\u2019s man, he\u2019d come off the board into the coaching staff, then into the interim seat,\u201d Fox Footy AFL 360 co-host Gerard Whateley said.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe took to the job wholeheartedly, the whole program, not just small targets within the team. <\/p>\n
\u201cBut the losses mounted … there have been some hellish hidings in there and Solomon\u2019s verdict is not to go for the gig.\u201d<\/p>\n
Melbourne legend Garry Lyon called Solomon \u201cas good a football person as you\u2019ll ever come across\u201d that \u201cwants the very best\u201d for Essendon. <\/p>\n
But Lyon noted the club\u2019s dire record under Solomon\u2019s lead \u2014 a complete contrast to Josh Fraser\u2019s 9-2 Blues \u2014 made it \u201cnigh on impossible\u201d for the Essendon interim coach to be hired.<\/p>\n
\u201cI suspect he probably flirted with that being as the senior coach at some particular stage and others in the administration may have had that view as well,\u201d Lyon said.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut the record speaks for itself and it would\u2019ve been nigh-on impossible to turn around and go: \u2018We\u2019re going to go ahead with you from here\u2019.<\/p>\n
\u201c\u2018Solly\u2019 will do what\u2019s best for Essendon and that is an overwhelming character trait of his. Let\u2019s hope everyone else involved in this process has a similar mindset.\u201d <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Premiership Eagle Will Schofield has declared Jaymie Graham should be Essendon\u2019s next senior coach and challenged the Bombers…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":844536,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[43,44,85,41,39,42,40],"class_list":["post-844535","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\/844535","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=844535"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/844535\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/844536"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=844535"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=844535"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=844535"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}