Essendon has turned to Dean Solomon as caretaker coach and will put him in charge for Sunday night’s first game since Brad Scott was sacked. The Bombers meet West Coast with the club again asking a short-term coach to steady a season that has produced only a 4.17 per cent win rate over the past 12 months.
Solomon’s name matters now because this is not his first time in the seat. He was caretaker coach at Gold Coast in 2017 after Rodney Eade was sacked, and his first game ended in a 58-point loss to Brisbane. He coached two more games that season and lost both before being replaced by Stuart Dew at the end of the year.
The timing invites comparison with a recent pattern across the AFL. Josh Fraser led Carlton to a 12-point win over the Western Bulldogs in his first game as interim coach after Michael Voss was sacked two weeks ago, while West Coast lost by 13 points to Brisbane in Jarrad Schofield’s first game after Adam Simpson’s departure. Troy Chaplin’s Melbourne also lost by 10 points to the Bulldogs in his first game in charge last year. Over the past 10 seasons, caretaker coaches have split their first games seven wins and seven losses.
That record suggests clubs often get some kind of immediate lift from a coaching change, but it does not guarantee a clean break from the past. Even the losses have often been competitive rather than one-sided, which is why Solomon’s own first spell at Gold Coast stands out so sharply: a 58-point defeat is a very different start from the narrow margins that have been more common in recent caretaker openings.
Sunday night gives Essendon its next chance to see whether the change can produce a response, and Solomon its best chance to show that his second caretaker debut can look nothing like the first.
