Tom Morris

The King call sits above all this, because if King stays, that does open the door for Merritt to get to Hawthorne and potentially Humphrey to get somewhere else as well.

I was sitting on the tarmac at Sydney Airport at the time, but I did follow what he said.

And he said, we will do the process in our own time.

We've had private interest in the job as well as some public interest.

It's clear the public interest is James Hurd.

The private interest I find intriguing because I think there are assistant coaches out there that would like this Essendon job.

And I think there are assistant coaches out there that would back themselves against a Hurd or a Longmire.

but no one knows exactly how deep this process is going to be or how exhaustive it's going to be.

I think there's every chance Essendon goes, these are our two people we'd like to talk to, and they talk to them both, and then they give one the job.

I don't think they necessarily have a five- or six-step process which would bring the assistant coaches in, but that will be determined in the next couple of weeks.

It might just be Andrew Welsh and Tim Roberts and Ted Richards.

It could easily just be those three.

No issue with that.

That's what Carlton are doing.

Chris Davies and Graeme Wright are really running it.

Adam Simpson will be involved in the business end.

But really, it's Graeme Wright and Chris Davies.

Yeah, I love that.

But Essendon is behind Carlton in terms of the process.

Is that an issue or not?