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Whateley

Whateley - Tuesday | Full Show (26.05.26)

26 May 2026

Transcription

Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?

0.031 - 2.554 Gerard Waitley

It's Gerard Waitley. Thanks for listening to the podcast.

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Chapter 2: What happened with the sacking of Brad Scott as Essendon coach?

2.994 - 28.182 Gerard Waitley

In this episode, the sacking of Brad Scott as Essendon coach. You had your say at length. Luke Hodge cast his leadership eye over the Bombers, and Jordan Lewis sat on the selection panel that appointed Brad Scott as coach, plus Sam Edmund with the behind-the-scenes details. And we shared in the life and legacy of Neil Danaher with Chris Fagan and Bill Guest. You can get in touch at any time.

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28.162 - 31.886 Gerard Waitley

Waitley at sen.com.au. Thanks for listening.

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Chapter 3: What insights does Luke Hodge provide about leadership in football?

32.367 - 55.772 Gerard Waitley

Enjoy. Tuesday morning. This is your town. This is your station. This is Waitley. Good morning. What a shocking morning for a sacking. On that alone, Essendon stands to be damned. The club issued its valet Neil Danaher statement at five o'clock yesterday. I wonder where that fitted in with the bloody business of sacking a coach.

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55.752 - 61.78 Gerard Waitley

So not the morning that I would have liked to share with you initially, but our 11 o'clock hour will be dedicated to Neil Danaher.

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Chapter 4: How did the Essendon board's decisions impact Brad Scott's tenure?

62.222 - 86.535 Gerard Waitley

Chris Fagan will join me. The Bombers have just become the most embarrassing example of a club offering the full support of the board just before it sacks the coach. The compulsion of Essendon's leaders to spread their nonsense publicly rather than keep their counsel and assess their options was a flawed strategy in real time. It's made them look foolish.

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86.515 - 109.885 Gerard Waitley

At Gather Round, the president was declaring the ambition Brad Scott would be the club's next premiership coach. The plan was rock solid. The notorious bomber factions wouldn't knock the club off course this time. Nobody asked Andrew Welsh to say it. He did it of his own accord. Last week, in his first public appearance, the chief executive expressed the club's resolve and backed Brad.

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Chapter 5: What legacy did Neale Daniher leave behind in the football community?

110.646 - 112.749 Gerard Waitley

Nobody asked Tim Roberts to say it.

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Chapter 6: How did Chris Fagan and Bill Guest remember Neale Daniher?

113.29 - 142.183 Gerard Waitley

He did it of his own accord. My word is oak. It's not a sentiment you'd apply to anyone in charge of the Bombers. They stand exposed as the worst kind of cliche today. Be quiet, make your assessments and act when you feel the time has arrived. Essendon looks like a club that had a plan but didn't understand the plan. Any study of recent rebuilds would have told you this would be the worst year.

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142.783 - 167.873 Gerard Waitley

The darkest hour necessary to acquire the requisite talent on which the rise will eventually be built. And in the darkest hour, there will be a lot of losing. The Bombers didn't make it to the halfway mark of the season. Like Carlton, Essendon's long suit is sacking coaches. It might be the only thing they're good at. The universal truth is there's a level of losing that can't be absorbed.

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168.253 - 189.425 Gerard Waitley

It causes people to flinch and buckle and break their word. Regime change a few years back was attempted to break away from old Essendon and reinvent the club for the modern era. That has failed spectacularly. The president is gone. The chief executive is gone. And now the coach is gone.

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Chapter 7: What are the implications of Essendon's coaching changes for the future?

189.445 - 193.05 Gerard Waitley

Old Essendon is being restored.

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193.553 - 210.899 Brad Scott

My commitment, and I think it takes a special kind of lunatic to actually lead this sort of thing, because if you weren't focused on the club's future and it was about just you and your position, you'd have a very different strategy. You'd go and get as many experienced players and high quality players as you could for the short term. We didn't do that.

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211.5 - 219.271 Brad Scott

I fully endorse that strategy and support it. And I'm tasked with the responsibility of leading it. And I intend to see it through.

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219.452 - 226.586 Gerard Waitley

Are there weeks like the three coming where you do have to win? where all the planning of the future, you've got to get something in the here and now?

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226.867 - 228.271 Brad Scott

Yeah, well, I mean, we want to win every week.

Chapter 8: How do injuries affect a team's performance and coaching decisions?

229.273 - 248.027 Brad Scott

But let's say, for example, you invert that question and say that rather than do we have to win, what if we do win them all and we win them convincingly? What changes? Do you think the club's with you? Do you sense that they are with you the whole year? Look, again, a fortunate thing for us is our president was on the board.

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248.208 - 268.617 Brad Scott

He wasn't president, but he was on the board when this strategy was put together. And our CEO was on the board when the strategy was put together. So they are all in on it. But I don't think like that. No. Because it's just unhelpful. My job is to lead this strategy through. And I just do my job. I don't worry too much about what might happen in the future.

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268.597 - 289.879 Brad Scott

Are there caveats, are there markers that are conditional on you at the moment? No, no, we have KPIs as everyone would hope we would. And in my 15 or so odd years of being a head coach, I always present a set of KPIs to the board to measure progress. And so we have that, but no KPIs have been issued to me.

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290.686 - 311.31 Gerard Waitley

That was Brad Scott last Monday night on AFL 360. There's a lot of cuteness around words today, but this is the Andrew Welsh quote. Nobody asked him to say it. He said it. We're of absolute belief that Brad will be our next premiership coach. That's the quote. We're of absolute belief that Brad will be our next premiership coach.

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311.711 - 334.51 Gerard Waitley

Welsh used it to stare down those who thought they could cause disruption for the path we are on. And almost as soon as those words were uttered, the undercurrent began undermining Brad Scott. Do what you need to do, but don't say it when it's not true. This was my view on crunch time before these articles were published. There's no hindsight in this.

335.311 - 365.648 Gerard Waitley

Do what you need to do and shut up while you make your assessments. My word is oak. It's not something you could say about Essendon. What a dismal day for a sacking. 1-300-736-736. The 40 Wings temper text is 0433-981116. The difference is temper. Our leadership portfolio and actually our sacked coach portfolio, because it always happens on Tuesday, is run by Luke Hodge. Hello to you, Hodgey.

366.016 - 374.768 Chris Fagan

Morning, Gerard. You sort of sit back here and go, where should we start? Do you go through the draft failures they've had over the past?

374.788 - 388.446 Chris Fagan

Do you go through the fact that the coach and the off-field side of things, they're not on the same page from the communication that they've all given and even to what you just played before with Brad Scott and how he was saying he was fortunate because the now president and the now CEO was on the board at the time.

388.983 - 413.893 Chris Fagan

Or do you go through the instability of the board, the fact that the sacking of Brad can get leaked out? Do we compare them to Carlton, as you mentioned before, where we've spoken about how poor Carlton have been about throwing out a coach whenever things have got tough because of outside noises and the board have faltered to it. But Essendon have had more coaches since 2008 than Carlton.

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