Essendon greats Matthew Lloyd and Tim Watson have given their immediate thoughts following the resignation of CEO Andrew Thorburn.
Thorburn barely lasted a day in the role, with his links to an ultra-conservative church ultimately being incompatible with the position.
Lloyd admits the process was an embarrassing one.
“You used the word embarrassing, I agree with that,” Lloyd told AFL Trade Radio.
“I hadn’t followed him too much, I’d heard the name Andrew Thorburn, didn’t know his background too well.
“He was part of the panel to select the CEO. I never like it when the person who is helping to find the CEO becomes it themselves, I don’t like that part of it too much.
“I did get a few texts saying ‘what did you think of this appointment’ and then once I started reading a lot of the comments, there was a lot of disappointed people.
“I thought to myself – surely David Barham, who I’m a big fan of, the club must have known the blowback they were going to get with this appointment, particularly having an AFLW side.
“Garry Lyon did ask (Thorburn) the question about how he would handle that. I always thought his beliefs were never going to align with the beliefs of a football club, so how you get to that point is pretty staggering to me and then the pressure comes on 24 hours later.
“Wouldn’t the club have known that earlier that this was going to come back to bite them? That’s the part of it that’s gobsmacked me and it’s embarrassing. Another hit on the club that’s had a poor decade really.”
Watson, who initially supported Thorburn’s appointment, says the process was not rigorous enough.
“His upbeat personality, the way that he presented himself, his understanding of the problems at Essendon, which he should have had because he had already been conducting the review, what he thought the club needed to do – I was 100 per cent impressed,” Watson told SEN Breakfast.
“I had no idea about his background and his beliefs and all those other associated things, in fact I had no idea about his NAB background which I’ve read more about.
“I did think that he was impressive, but let’s move to the next part of this which is the selection process because I was told, and I believe it to be the case, that he had to be interviewed for the job like everyone else, that gone down to five candidates I believe and he was one of them.
“You just look at it at face value and so many people have told me that all you had to do was Google him and you’d find out the church he represented and what their beliefs were and Essendon could have found that out easily.
“They said they understood that he was the chairman of the church, but it wasn’t apparent to them about the sermon back in 2013 and that that was part of the church’s beliefs.
“Clearly the process wasn’t rigorous enough and it wasn’t robust enough and the due diligence that needed to be applied to it wasn’t there and that goes to the heart of the football club and other appointments you make.”