IF IT ever was about how many games Kevin Sheedy and Essendon could win this year it is no longer. The decision to replace Sheedy as coach — the finest to have led a red and black side on to a football field — has in principle been made.

Whether or not it is confirmed next Tuesday night, when the Essendon board next meets, the only debate left to settle now is the choice of how the exit of such a legend is appropriately handled. It is a debate that is important for two reasons.

Firstly, Sheedy's immense contribution to Essendon and his place in the history of the club, one that takes its past very seriously, has to be respected.

Secondly, his departure cannot be allowed to become the sort of seismic, grievous experience that Norm Smith's dismissal was for Melbourne four decades ago. The Demons have not known success or even the intoxicating experience of true power since.

The need to release Sheedy has been felt for some time but, out of deference and not a slight regard for his ability to conjure something out of low expectations in the last year of a contract, not articulated.

But Essendon has not been in any sort of serious premiership contention since 2001. The side finished fifth in 2002, sixth in 2003 and 2004, and 13th and 15th in seasons 2005 and 2006. Eighth appears to be the limit this year. There is a pattern in these results that hasn't and isn't being ignored.

Admittedly, the suggestion of an excuse for the trend is there; that football's equalisation policies have finally bitten into Sheedy's record, although the Dons, not a little hubristically, were arguing not so long ago that they were impervious. But the powerful at Essendon aren't ignoring, either, that 14 of the team when it last resembled something like Essendon's best 22 — the combination that met Geelong in round 14 — were on an Essendon list in 2003.

James Hird, Dustin Fletcher, David Hille, Andrew Welsh, Mark and Jason Johnson, Jason Laycock, Scott Lucas, Adam McPhee, Mark McVeigh, Damien Peverill, Adam Ramanauskas, Jobe Watson and Courtney Johns were all at Windy Hill four years ago at the least, as were Matthew Lloyd and Jason Winderlich, who were unable to be out on the Telstra Dome turf for the occasion of Hird's 250th game.

That is not a team so radically overhauled between 2003 and 2007 as to justify the sort of Essendon downturn of the last three or four years that is attributed in this draft-literate era to rebuilding. Moreover, the improvement this year, apart from the impressive Paddy Ryder and Alwyn Davey, has been inspired by the return of a 29-year-old champion full-forward and the arrival of a now 30-year-old full-back for whom today is their time, not tomorrow.

Sheedy said yesterday that he thought Essendon might next be able to seriously contend in 2010. "I think that's about the right time … we made a decision a year-and-a-half ago to change the list and work through and recruit … we've had probably something like 50 per cent player turnover," he said.

But he must know that Hird, Fletcher, the Johnsons, Lucas, Peverill and Lloyd are likely to have slipped into retirement by then, if not earlier, taking with them their medals, premierships and sundry honours.

There will be no need for Sheedy to resign, as Neale Daniher and Chris Connolly have done already.

Sheedy will be chaired from the coaches box on his final day if he allows the club to indulge him in that manner. The club wants that and much more.

Equally, he is entitled to argue his case. But he must also remember his own advice. Yesterday, when he was asked what sense it made for him to be building for 2010 when he could hardly expect to be at the helm in three years, he replied: "It doesn't matter, as long as you do the right thing by the club and that's what I intend doing."

The Essendon board will sit down next Tuesday evening to make formal a decision no other board at Windy Hill has had to make since Barry Davis was removed in 1980. It can only be hoped that Sheedy acknowledges that they, too, want only what's best for Essendon.