THE Essendon team that smashed North Melbourne was selected on Tuesday, and included names such as David Hille and Ricky Dyson, who might not have been on the list, much less the team, had Kevin Sheedy saddled up for his 28th season.
Whereas the intuitive horse whisperer was wont to take his time, and often did not inform players of their selection until late in the week — and sometimes made whimsical changes on game day — his youthful successor choose the 22 on Tuesday and did not deviate.
The Essendon team that dismantled the Roos played on and moved the ball swiftly, without fear of blundering. The players were aware that, under Matthew Knights, they would not be dragged for errors and misdemeanours as they might have been under the veteran.
"As a player, he doesn't take you off the ground for any misdemeanours," said captain Matthew Lloyd, who kicked six goals yesterday. "It's all based on rotations and when you're fatigued, you come off."
The Essendon team that beat the Kangaroos for the first time in seven years was quick and slick. Some of the better players — Mark McVeigh, Hille and Jobe Watson — were not on the same page as Sheedy last year, the latter pair having been dropped late in the season after the club's board had announced that 2007 would be the end of the extraordinary marriage between coach and club.
When you change the coach, you change the team and the club. The new Essendon of the two Matthews — Knights and Lloyd — is a different club to the one led for so many years by Sheedy and James Hird. Teams reflect the personality and methods of the coach. The Knights team is more organised than Sheedy's 2007 unit.
Sheedy coached in poetry, Hird played in verse, Knights and Lloyd promise prose. While players and coach are in the honeymoon phase, they listen to one another and, as with lovers, they can finish one another's sentences. Essendon is in love with Knights.
In time, we will know whether Knights was the right man, and the wisdom of the decision to replace the legend with another 250-game former Richmond captain. One can observe the revolution at Windy Hill, but no judgement should be rendered on its success for a good while — it might take years.
It is clear, though, that this is a different club.
"I just think Matthew is more aligned to the, you know, X and Y generation," said Essendon chairman Ray Horsburgh, who wore much of the flak for removing Sheedy. "Remember, he's coached a lot of these kids for the last two years at Bendigo and he's listened to them and he knows the style of play that they've got. So he's just more aligned to them.
"And he's going to play them, and the club wants to play them. He doesn't have to be told — he wants to play them. We'll make mistakes, kids will stuff up every now and again, but we'll stick with it and he's got a game plan that reflects the modern running game."
In some ways, Essendon resembles the Liberal Party post-John Howard; those who wanted change now say it should have happened much earlier. They feel the institution had become defined by one man, who, for all his success, stayed too long and stymied the move to modernity.
Essendon's forthright full-back, the triple premiership Brisbane Lion Mal Michael, said Knights represented "new ideas" and "a new game style that suits the players, the younger players mainly".
Knights said he had given players "the licence to be creative and make things happen".
"You've got a licence to take the game on and he's coached these kids for three years and knows their games inside out," Lloyd said.
"And I think that will have a huge say in the early part of the season."
Knights is shining now. The true test will come, as it does for most coaches, when he is no longer the fresh voice, and the new lovers first strike turbulence.
