WISDOM with hindsight is not wisdom at all but if serious fault is to be found in Essendon's decision to part company with Kevin Sheedy, it won't be discovered by sifting through the events of the past four weeks.

To begin with, nothing much of consequence has transpired in the month since the decision was announced. Nothing. As big a story as it was, most have come to understand that it will amount to no more than the final pages of an otherwise wonderful chapter in the Essendon history.

Sheedy is big — arguably the greatest Essendon coach of all — but the red and black jumper is bigger still. It is undeniably more important, even to the howler monkeys who have found self-importance in their screeches of protest.

It can be argued as to whether more thought might have been given to the timing of the decision or more attention paid to ceremonial niceties but such issues will not matter in time, if they matter much now. Essendon will do well to ignore the pedants within the family.

There is a question, though, the board might not be able to turn away from when the time for reflection arrives. If it exists anywhere, error resides in the decision three years ago to grant Sheedy a contract that will expire in another 10 days or so.

Eight of the 11 people who were a party to that choice sit around the board table today knowing that a two-year deal, instead of three, was the call they needed to make but did not.

The team was in decline — it had not seriously contended for three years — and many of the reservations about Sheedy's ability to see through another complete rebuild, which told against him this year, were held then.

Moreover, the option of terminating the deal did not exist. Essendon's fading presbyterian traits still hold high the honour of a contract, and even his enemies knew that to sack Sheedy would have invited widespread condemnation, not least for the lack of respect a true great deserves. Three years, undoubtedly, was going to be three years.

There was, at the time, nowhere else he could take his career, either. Not even Richmond. The Tigers were chasing down Terry Wallace with a five-year contract, which was an admission in itself. The view of a Richmond renaissance held even by those at Punt Road was the one you get looking through the wrong end of a telescope.

In the circumstances, there was no compelling reason to stretch the life of a new contract for Sheedy beyond 2006.

This, of course, was the year Essendon finished 15th after winning only three matches — a season after finishing 13th.

Removing the most influential figure at Essendon since John Coleman obviously would have been a considerably easier sell last year than this. This much has not been lost on certain members of the board of chairman Ray Horsburgh, who unwisely jumped at a shadow last week and spoke about a decision he had previously said he would not.

Horsburgh, who was a relatively new Essendon director in 2004 when Sheedy's final contract was drawn, also said one other thing.

He admitted that Mark Williams, the Port Adelaide coach who has been eyed as a potential successor to Sheedy for some time, is at the very top of the club's wish list despite the fact he is contracted for two more seasons and extremely comfortable in command of a team he has taken swiftly back into contention.

Williams was out of contract at end of 2006.