'They are losing good people': James Hird's warning to AFL after worrying coaches survey

Essendon legend James Hird has warned the AFL risks losing quality coaches if it doesn't increase the soft salary cap.

The soft cap is essentially a salary cap for each club's coaching staff and football department.

In 2025, the league increased the soft cap to $7.675 million, and it will go up again next year by a further $250,000.

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But it remains a fair way short of where it was prior to the 2020 cutbacks amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

A survey conducted last month revealed only seven per cent of assistant coaches around the league were happy with their pay packet, and only 37 per cent felt they were afforded an acceptable work-life balance.

Hird, who coached Essendon for two seasons before being banned amid the 2013 supplements scandal, agrees assistant coaches in general don't get properly rewarded.

"In 2019, to 2025, we are at $1.8 million less than what was being paid back then, as the whole industry's money has gone up," Hird told Nine's Footy Furnace.

"The reason I talk about this is coaching and development of players is the most important part (of the game).

"We have these players, the biggest assets in the game, and we're not giving our assistant coaches enough money (to teach them).

"We're not actually looking after them well enough. The rest of the world may say they're getting enough.

"You talk to any assistant coach now who was coaching back pre-Covid and they are (still) coaching now - the conditions are nowhere near where they need to be, and we're losing very good coaches from the system.

"Why hasn't the AFL rectified this? They are losing good people out of the game."

Geelong great Jimmy Bartel agrees the AFL needs to focus on bolstering clubs' coaching and development programs.

He says young players being brought into the AFL system should be getting the best possible education.

"You want to still attract the best players and best people to stay in the game," Bartel said.

"If you are Richmond, for example, and you're going to have 10 young kids coming in, the most important bit is the development.

"If recruiters are going to spend two-three years looking at them, you want to then hand them over to the best possible environment, and that is coaches and people who can see the game, who can fast-track them."