Sam Edmund

That's a bit strong, wasn't it?

My thoughts on that are very clear.

I'm not pushing James Hurd to be the coach.

I know you're not.

I'm just defending Essendon's position in all of this.

And I don't think that... And Gerard and I disagree on this.

Gerard says they've got to make a decision and say, yes, James Hurd's our coach or no, he's not.

I don't think that's the case at all.

Their only obligation...

for any potential candidates to say whether he's in or out of the process, if in fact they want to know about it.

And I say this with the greatest respect.

You know how much I respect Ken and Adam and the assistants.

If you don't want to go, if you don't want to put yourself into the process, then don't do it.

And Gerard is of the opinion that they're not going to get equality if he's involved.

They're not going to get equality line up of potential assistants.

I think that's not been fair to the Essendon people who are running the process.

I'm a bit more,

And I think that they are very open to who's going to coach them.

I don't think they've got a closed mind to James Hurd, which is a bit of the narrative that's going around.

I agree with that.