KEVIN SHEEDY set the scene for his own dismissal, agreeing to meet his executioners in the fading light of late Tuesday afternoon in a hotel at the top of Collins Street.
Club chairman Ray Horsburgh and managing director Peter Jackson told Sheedy to expect an update on the most debated position in football. He was on his way to a horse racing function and had barely sat down when Horsburgh broke the news that ended a 27-year reign: "The board's decided we're not going to renew your contract, Kevin, but we want you to coach until the end of the year."
"I understand that," replied Sheedy, "and I want to coach until the end of the year."
Sitting on the first floor of the Sofitel, the men washed down the historic moment with a bottle of Kennedy's Point sauvignon blanc. They spent the best part of an hour discussing Sheedy's future.
Sheedy has said all year that the club would have to sack him. They did, and he became the fourth AFL coach to be pushed in a month and the third in a week.
He told them he would look at another coaching job and that he would be reluctant to work for the AFL despite the competition's governing body saying there would always be a job for him there.
Jackson suggested Sheedy could work with the AFL, if not necessarily for it. After all, the game is expanding in southern Queensland, moving into South Africa and wants to continue its work with indigenous Australia.
The two men asked Sheedy whether he had any thoughts on who should replace him, but he wanted no part of that. There is plenty of work for Sheedy left to do and, as he said yesterday, his next birthday might be his 60th but he is is not too old. Several times in recent days he has referred to Jock McHale, the official AFL Legend whose playing-coaching record Sheedy passed two weeks ago, and the more recently inducted Norm Smith. Both died about two years after they finished coaching. Sheedy has every intention of hanging around.
After shaking hands with Horsburgh and Jackson, Sheedy went to his horse racing function, keeping his sacking a secret. Then he visited the home of his lawyer, Brian Ward. He also called his original chairman of selectors and long-time ally, Brian Donohoe, in New York.
That this would be no ordinary termination has been obvious as the season progressed. As another generation of baby Bombers failed to work the magic of their predecessors, the club saw that Sheedy was not the man to guide it.
Horsburgh, an unashamed Sheedy fan, had come to realise this in recent weeks after taking counsel from, among others, senior players who persuaded him the next generation needed a new leader with a new message.
But all the planning could not have prepared for the scenes at Windy Hill yesterday as the news broke and Sheedy declared that perhaps it was time for club and coach "to live without each other and see how we go".
More media crowded into the club than had ever been seen at an AFL gathering, angry fans hurled abuse as they drove past the club, while others shrouded in red and black lined Napier Street.
Several hundred gave the coach a standing ovation at training, and the club's public relations experts mused that six weeks of such emotion could become distracting for the players, who, after all, remain an outside chance for the finals.
Like dumped coaches Neale Daniher, Chris Connolly and Denis Pagan before him, Sheedy carried himself with grace, dignity and humour. He opened by asking if he was arriving at a funeral.
He described the club as a great client, and said he had suspected all year that this was coming, following some fairly strong hints from Jackson as early as January.
Sheedy described Adam Ramanauskas, who is playing senior football again after two bouts of cancer, as his greatest achievement. Jackson, on telling the players that Sheedy was going, found the atmosphere in the room reminiscent of the two occasions he had broken the news of Ramanauskas' illness.
"Why now?" asked Essendon runner and former premiership player John Barnes. Jackson's explanation was encapsulated by Horsburgh later when he said: "It firmed up this week because it was getting messy."
The heavy competition for a replacement was also a factor. "Three other clubs are looking for a coach. Carlton are now looking for a coach and we didn't want to be at the end of the queue."
There was an element of Pontius Pilate about Horsburgh, and his wife, Pam, was moved to call radio stations to defend her husband when the talkback turned feral.
The Essendon board voted to sack Sheedy on Monday night and announce it almost immediately, after the coach had delivered a presentation and driven away from Windy Hill joking that he had been re-signed for 10 years.
While Horsburgh became convinced after the Bombers' dismal performance against Collingwood, the decision was still not unanimous.
At least one director, Daryl Jackson, and possibly another, stuck with Sheedy until the end, but agreed to unite with the rest of the board by early Tuesday.
Football's life cycle has seen to it that 33 players on the Bombers' current senior list were not born when their coach was appointed. While the younger ones were stunned early yesterday, the older players had seen it coming.
They, together with some influential former players and key administrators, persuaded Horsburgh that the club's youth needed a new mentor.
Since Matthew Lloyd became captain, he has challenged the sloppiness that had crept into the club. Unlike predecessor James Hird, who fell out with a board member when the then captain did not take a stand against Sheedy, Lloyd would not have been shy in voicing his opinion.
When Sheedy addressed the team after his extraordinarily buoyant news conference, he asked them for 12 hours of their lives — the club has six more home-and-away games left this season. Fittingly, round 21 against Richmond will be his last appearance as Essendon coach in Melbourne unless the Bombers can reach the finals for the 21st time under Sheedy.
The Tigers have ruled out Sheedy as senior coach — that time passed when the three-time Richmond premiership player signed his last contract with Essendon — but should a senior position elude him elsewhere, there is a group of influential Richmond supporters who would look at persuading him to become an executive president.
Sheedy left Richmond to go to Essendon at the end of 1980. The Tigers wanted Sheedy to stay but they could not offer him a senior coaching position because the club had just defeated Collingwood by a record margin to win the 1980 flag and it seemed too much to remove the premiership coach.
Sheedy coached Essendon to four flags, taking the club to seven grand finals — an average of one every four years. His winning percentage as a coach sits above 60 per cent for his 629 games, and only six times in 26 complete seasons has the club missed the finals.
But his legacy transcends his win-loss ratio. Sheedy ended one of the Bombers' darkest eras, not only turning them into winners but leading the club from the VFL into the AFL as a national powerhouse and one of the biggest sporting clubs in the country.
He pioneered not only the national competition but the cause of indigenous football and backed Michael Long in his stand against racism. Sheedy waved his jacket when Essendon beat West Coast and increased the average crowds between those two teams by 30,000. He reinvented Anzac Day and more recently helped mastermind the Dreamtime Game. Back in 1984 his tactics on grand final day created a trend of constantly re-positioning players.
His ploys saw the 15-metre penalty extended to 50 and his lobbying extended the interchange bench.
Tim Watson was still a teenager when Sheedy took over at Essendon. Now Sheedy is coaching his former captain's son. One of the directors who voted to terminate him on Monday night, David Evans, is the son of one of Sheedy's former club presidents, the late AFL chairman Ron.
There were several heavy hearts at Windy Hill on Monday night, and while the consensus remained that the club had done the right thing, the significance of the decision still weighed heavily come Tuesday and early Wednesday.
In a sense it was the gracious Sheedy and bottomless well of charm that lifted the club from its gloom. And Sheedy, of course once again stole the show. The biggest decision has been made. Now an even bigger one lies ahead.
