{"id":893191,"date":"2026-09-15T19:18:20","date_gmt":"2026-09-15T19:18:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/893191\/"},"modified":"2026-09-15T19:18:20","modified_gmt":"2026-09-15T19:18:20","slug":"afl-news-2026-james-hird-essendon-bombers-meeting-footy-classified-comments-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/893191\/","title":{"rendered":"AFL news 2026 | James Hird, Essendon Bombers meeting; Footy Classified comments"},"content":{"rendered":"

Essendon great James Hird<\/a> has revealed the latest on the situation with his beloved club, stating there\u2019s been no meeting over a role at the Bombers.<\/p>\n

Ever since Brad Scott was sacked as Bombers coach<\/a>, Hird had been linked with a return to the club and was part of the head coach shortlist<\/a>. <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

James Hird on Footy Classified.\u00a0Nine<\/p>\n

Hird was set to have a meeting at the end of the week with Essendon powerbrokers, Seven reported last week. <\/p>\n

On Tuesday\u2019s Footy Classified, Hird said he was \u201cupset\u201d details of a private meeting had been leaked an hour after he was sent a text<\/a>. <\/p>\n

The club great confirmed on the Nine show that the meeting had not gone ahead in the end. <\/p>\n

\u201cNo meeting and no formal offer from the Essendon Football Club,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n

Host Eddie McGuire then pressed Hird for further details and was asked if he thought that brings an end to the saga. <\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m not sure. I don\u2019t know,\u201d he said before conceding \u201cthat probably is it, yes\u201d. <\/p>\n

Hird shares a close friendship with Mark McVeigh, who landed the head coach role over him, and said he\u2019s still in contact with him. <\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve spoken to Mark a few times, yes,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019s a mate, and we speak about footy and opinions on different players.\u201d<\/p>\n

The 53-year-old added he wasn\u2019t sure what the process is around how it will move forward and was clearly not willing to divulge further details. <\/p>\n

Since 2025, Hird has held a director of coaching role at Port Melbourne in the VFL with the club\u2019s season ending last week when they were beaten by Geelong in finals. The final score was 14.12 (96) – 6.13 (49). <\/p>\n

Hird\u2019s last season of coaching in the AFL was his assistant role at GWS which ended in early 2023. <\/p>\n

His last season of head coaching was in 2015 at Essendon, a tenure that was marred by the supplements saga. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Essendon great James Hird has revealed the latest on the situation with his beloved club, stating there\u2019s been…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":893192,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[560],"tags":[638,64,63,55,639,85],"class_list":["post-893191","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-afl","tag-afl","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-australian-football-league","tag-australianfootballleague","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/893191","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=893191"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/893191\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/893192"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=893191"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=893191"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=893191"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}