‘Players don’t come to bad clubs’: Bombers boss’ board plea after ‘20 years of shortcuts’

Essendon president David Barham has made a plea for stability ahead of a contested board election, saying the club has “20 years of history of taking quick fixes and shortcuts and it hasn’t worked”.

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The Bombers are desperately seeking a breakthrough finals victory heading into 2025, after a trade period where they opted against their trademark strategy of trying to win October in order to win September.

Instead of trading aggressively for a player like Dan Houston, the team kept mostly quiet, instead targeting the draft where they added top target small forward Isaac Kako (who was tied to the club via their Next Generation Academy) along with Melbourne’s 2025 first-round pick.

Speaking with The Age ahead of an election where Barham is one of five contenders for two board positions – along with ex-players Paul Weston and Dean Solomon, plus director Melissa Verner Green and member Luke Maxfield – the former media executive called for the club to stay the course.

“I’m preaching stability, unity and alignment because that’s what we need,” Barham said.

“We need that to be successful. So I would like the chance to finish what we started.

“So what I say them (the fans) is (I) totally understand … I’ve felt that way myself. But you can’t hold the people that are in there now – Brad Scott, Craig Vozzo especially, responsible for what’s happened the last 20 years.

“Those two, in particular, they weren’t here in 2015 when it went wrong (with the drugs saga), they weren’t here in 2007 (when Kevin Sheedy left). It’s irrelevant.

“What’s relevant now is we put all our effort in to make sure we build a club that’s going to give us that sustained success.

“All I can say is we’ve got 20 years of history of taking quick fixes and shortcuts and it hasn’t worked. So what we have to do now is have the courage to do the work and stay the course.”

Barham conceded the club’s strategy under list boss Adrian Dodoro in the late 2010s, where they traded aggressively for players like Jake Stringer, Adam Saad, Devon Smith and Dylan Shiel, was “a mistake”.

“So we gave up too many draft picks, on the advice to the board was that we were close … with hindsight, we weren’t,” he said.

“So you’ve got to learn your lessons, which is how we’re in the draft …

“You also now compound that with Joe Daniher, Adam Saad, (Orazio) Fantasia and Conor McKenna all leaving at the end of 2020.

“But he (Brad Scott) could’ve this year gone, I’m not trading Stringer, I want Dan Houston, pick nine will get us Dan Houston, load up his list, got to win games. But he’s taken a bigger picture view of the club … and he’s been selfless and for that I’m very grateful.”

The oft-maligned Dodoro settled action against the club at the Fair Work Commission with a reported six-figure payment recently.

“I can’t (talk) about what happened but we ran a two-year handover process for Adrian to Matt Rosa. Essentially, we followed through with that. It was a plan to bring Matt (Rosa) in as a handover,” Barham said.

“I will never bag Adrian. Adrian’s a life member of the footy club and as president of the footy club, he’s put a lot of work in to the footy club … whether you like him or don’t like him, he’s committed a lot of his life to this footy club. So I’ll always have a lot of respect for Adrian.

“But at the same time I think we’ve got a really good recruiting manager in Matt Rosa for the future, I think we’ve got some improved processes, I think we’ve got a better spread of people across the board and I think Craig Vozzo’s made a big impact, because he’s come in and seen that we need more help in recruiting.

“And I think now that our planning is better. I think we have now a longer-term strategic plan. I think we’ve gone from – in some ways I think we picked best available. I think we’re picking now ‘what do we need’ and what’s our list need in three years.

“It’s really about identifying what we need. You don’t want to have too many midfielders, you don’t want to have too many small forwards.”

Barham believes Essendon’s culture has improved over the past 12 months under Rosa and Scott, pointing to the re-signing of Mason Redman, Andrew McGrath and Jordan Ridley.

“One of the most gratifying things for me was Mason Redman re-signing halfway through the next year … he said ‘had this been 12 months ago, I wouldn’t have re-signed’,” Barham said.

“You’ve got to have stability, and you’ve got to have unity and all those other things because players don’t come to bad clubs.”