{"id":944138,"date":"2026-10-28T16:30:23","date_gmt":"2026-10-28T16:30:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/944138\/"},"modified":"2026-10-28T16:30:23","modified_gmt":"2026-10-28T16:30:23","slug":"afl-legend-james-hird-joins-ai-firm-affinda-as-global-head-of-sport","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/944138\/","title":{"rendered":"AFL legend James Hird joins AI firm Affinda as global head of sport"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Essendon football legend James Hird has put his AFL coaching ambitions on hold to join an artificial intelligence software firm, backed by billionaire Paul Little, targeting the commercial sports data market.<\/p>\n<p>Hird was forced to congratulate former teammate Mark McVeigh on his appointment as the new Bombers senior coach in August, after a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.afr.com\/companies\/sport\/prodigal-son-why-essendon-can-t-move-past-club-great-james-hird-20260528-p601j3\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">very public campaign<\/a> to bring Hird back as the coach was unsuccessful.<\/p>\n<p>Loading&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Essendon football legend James Hird has put his AFL coaching ambitions on hold to join an artificial intelligence&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":944139,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[560],"tags":[638,64,63,55,639,85],"class_list":["post-944138","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\/944138","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=944138"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/944138\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/944139"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=944138"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=944138"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=944138"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}