James Hird coaching Essendon again sounds bonkers. Which is why it might just happen |
James Hird coaching Essendon again sounds bonkers. Which is why it might just happen
June 4, 2026 — 11:40am
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The strangest and most fascinating conversation I’ve had with James Hird was about persuading cocaine farmers to grow cacao beans.
It was nearly 10 years ago and Hird wasn’t long out of football, the protracted drug scandal having finally squeezed the last drop of resolve from the Essendon players and his capacity to coach them.
With the Court of Arbitration for Sport yet to deliver its final, crushing judgement on The Saga, as survivors refer to it, club and coach had agreed to part ways, leaving Hird both exhausted and possessed by a manic energy.
He needed a purpose to commit to – one far removed from football.
Hird’s big idea, developed with entrepreneurial friends he’d made while studying an MBA during his AFL-imposed year of exile, was to travel to Colombia and find villagers willing to stop growing coca plants for the cartel and switch to the increasingly scarce, key ingredient for chocolate.
A detailed explanation of Colombian soil types and labour politics ensued.
The plan at once sounded barking mad.
It evoked images of Hird, machete in hand, hacking his way through the Colombian jungle, like a young Michael Douglas in Romancing the Stone, on a reckless and potentially deadly mission to find the only people in the world who didn’t have a view about Stephen Dank’s chemistry or Jobe Watson’s Brownlow.
I’m the same age as Hird. I remember thinking while listening........