SA Weekend: How Jade Sheedy went from not wanting to coach to being the hottest property in the SANFL
Jade Sheedy went from not wanting to coach to being the hottest property in the SANFL. From his late start in footy, to standing on the cusp of a three-peat, Andrew Capel tracks his journey.
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It wasn’t supposed to be this way. The South Australian National Football League’s hottest coaching prospect Jade Sheedy, who has spectacularly won premierships in his first two years in charge of Woodville-West Torrens, never wanted to be a league coach.
He just “fell into it”.
“It wasn’t on my agenda, I didn’t have any desire to be a coach,” Sheedy says, as he prepares the Eagles for the 2022 SANFL season and a crack at a first club three-peat.
“I wasn’t one of those guys who seemed destined to coach and planned a career around it. I wanted to do other things.
“In adulthood I just focused on playing good footy (for Sturt), working on my carpentry business and trying to support my family as best I could.”
So it is remarkable that Sheedy is now the most sought-after SANFL coach by AFL clubs.
In a competition that boasts eight coaches with AFL playing or coaching experience – Jade Rawlings (Norwood), Martin Mattner (Sturt), Brad Gotch (West Adelaide), Jacob Surjan (North Adelaide), Matthew Lokan (Port Adelaide), Michael Godden (Adelaide), Brett Hand (Glenelg) and Paul Thomas (Central District) – Sheedy is understood to have received more AFL assistant coaching offers in the off-season than any of them.
But – with other priorities – he politely knocked them back.
“There were a few nibbles, which was flattering, but, right now, they were received with a pretty firm no,” Sheedy, 42, tells SAWeekend.
“I have three young kids (Ava, 13, Will, 12, and Max, 8), my wife (Kelly) is from Adelaide and we’re settled here, I’m running my company (Sheedy Homes) and I have a great job at the Eagles, so life’s good.”
Sheedy, who has been appointed SANFLState coach for the second consecutive year, smiles at the AFL interest, struggling to come to terms with the fact he is even on clubs’ coaching radar.
He has come a long way from the shy teenager who briefly gave football away at 16 because he didn’t think he was good enough.
Born in Tumut, which sits in the western foothills of the NSW Snowy Mountains, Sheedy moved to Gol Gol on the banks of the River Murray with his family (dad John, mum Ann, older siblings John-Paul and Angela and younger brother Justin) at age five, when his parents sold their fish and chip shop and bought the Paddle Wheel Hotel.
Situated in NSW but serving as a suburb of the Victorian Sunraysia city Mildura, whose regional centre is only 6km away, Gol Gol has a population of only 1500. The family pub, where Sheedy lived for two years, was across the road from his primary school.
Having previously lived in a rugby league region, he knew nothing about Australian football. But that would quickly change.
Within a year, Sheedy was introduced to the sport, which had a stranglehold in Mildura.
“The locals lived and breathed their football and cricket and my best mate’s dad coached the Gol Gol Hawks footy side, so I had a go,” Sheedy says.
Starting in the under-9s, Sheedy progressed to the Hawks’ under-11s before being forced to change clubs as Gol Gol’s lack of player numbers, due to being such a small town, prevented it from fielding higher age junior sides. So Sheedy jumped the river.
He joined Mildura’s Imperials’ under-13s and moved to St Joseph’s College.
But, in his own words, he was no superstar.
After sitting on the interchange bench “quite a lot” at under-15 level, he had decided to pack football in and spend his leisure time playing tennis, where he was good enough to make junior representative teams, and water ski on the Murray.
“I’m not a sooky person by any means but I was a small, skinny kid, I wasn’t very good, wasn’t getting a lot of game time and thought footy probably wasn’t for me,” Sheedy says.
Then came a sliding doors moment. A phone call out of the blue from Imperials under-17 coach John Clohesy just before the start of the next season changed the course of Sheedy’s life.
“John rang and told me the team was short of players and asked if I could fill in,” Sheedy says.
“I hadn’t done a pre-season but I turned up to help out and did all right.
“John gave me opportunities, I started going okay and fell in love with the game again.”
The next year, having grown over summer, Sheedy was appointed under-17 captain.
“I’ve always been the type of person where, once someone puts trust in me, I become heavily invested and pour absolutely everything into it,” Sheedy says.
“It’s no different to me as a coach. Once I see players go above and beyond I form a pretty strong relationship with them. Me and John had that and as a result I gradually got better and opportunities opened up.”
Sheedy played his first senior game for Imperials while he was still eligible for the under-17s.
By age 19, he had played 50 senior matches and won a premiership (in 1999) while his dad had become club treasurer.
“It wouldn’t have happened without that phone call,” Sheedy notes, adding that senior coach Tony Hickey, a Mildura sporting legend, has also been a big influence on him.
Sheedy’s good form did not go unnoticed.
After a strong game against Irymple in 1999, he was approached by Sturt defender Seamus Maloney, who was an Imperials product and whose dad, Peter, was club president.
“I knew nothing about the competition but I talked to mum and dad about it and thought, ‘why not?’,” Sheedy recalls.
Double Blues chief executive Graeme Dunstan drove to Mildura to stitch up the deal, getting more than he bargained for.
Dunstan stayed at Sheedy’s parents’ motel, Mid City Plantation Motel, and Sheedy remembers getting back there at about 2am after a night out with his mates and seeing Dunstan playing the drums while his dad, who played lead guitar in a band called Shades, was on the guitar.
“It was an interesting night but it was a part of my journey to Unley and the rest is history, I suppose,” says Sheedy, whose parents now run the Warooka Hotel on SA’s Yorke Peninsula.
“I wasn’t a high-priced recruit by any means but things worked out okay.”
That is an understatement. After shifting to Adelaide and moving in with Maloney and other Sturt teammates Xavier Campbell (who is now Essendon AFL chief executive), Stephen White and Brett Howman, Sheedy overcame the “shock” of a tough SANFL pre-season to become a Double Blues legend.
He “toiled” his way through his first year on a wing under coach Phil Carman, the fiery former Norwood, Collingwood, Melbourne, Essendon and North Melbourne star, but started 2001 in the centre square and didn’t look back.
In 2002, under new coach Brenton Phillips, Sheedy, aged 22, sensationally tied for the Magarey Medal – the SANFL’s highest individual honour – with Sturt midfield teammate Tim Weatherald on 16 votes.
Remarkably, it was the first significant individual award of Sheedy’s career.
“I turned up on the night not knowing too much about the Magarey Medal because I was never one to strive for individual accolades and never won any as a kid,” he said.
“I’d never finished in the top three of the best and fairest at any level and although I was rated by the media as one of the medal favourites I didn’t think I was a chance.
“But as the night wore on – I wasn’t drinking because we were still in finals – and the votes started piling up I got pretty nervous.
“To share the medal with a teammate
was pretty special and it was a great night for the club.
“It’s funny how I’m now referred to as a Magarey Medallist because I still don’t look at myself like that.”
Three weeks later Sheedy was a SANFL premiership player after the Double Blues stunned hot favourite Central District – the competition powerhouse in the 2000s – to win by 47 points and claim their 13th flag.
But the celebrations were short-lived. Six days later, Sheedy was with victorious teammates on an end-of-season trip to Bali when his life was shockingly turned upside down.
He was enjoying life inside Bali nightspot the Sari Club in Kuta at about 11pm when it exploded.
Sheedy and some of his teammates and Sturt officials were hurled to the ground as the lights went out under a sea of debris, fire and ash as three bombs – at the Sari Club, Paddy’s Bar and in front of the American consulate – were detonated in a terrorist attack.
Eighty-eight Australians were among the 202 people from more than 20 countries who were killed, while hundreds more were wounded.
The Double Blues, who had been on such a high after breaking a 26-year premiership drought, were hit hard. Reserves player Josh Deegan and popular trainer Bob Marshall, a former club ruckman, were killed.
Sheedy was among a host of players who were hurt, including premiership teammates Weatherald, Michael Curtis, Daniel Wicks and Matthew Cooper.
He had 40 stitches in the back of his head while also suffering burns to his hip and feet.
But he knows he was one of the lucky ones.
“I remember having a towel wrapped around my head to try to stop the bleeding from a pretty bad gash but I was okay, there were a lot of people worse off than me,” Sheedy says.
Of the injured Sturt players, Julian Burton was the worst. He sustained shocking burns to his back and remained in hospital for several months.
Curtis recalls seeing Sheedy “crawling around in dead bodies”.
The pair were among a Double Blues contingent to return to Bali for the 10th anniversary of the bombings.
“It was a horrific thing to have happened
and I still remember it like it was yesterday,” Sheedy says.
“I saw some things over there that you just can’t explain.”
While he has never forgotten what happened in Bali – “how could you?” – he says he quickly “got into life’s groove again”.
“When you nearly die – or someone close to you does – you say to yourself that you’re not going to take life so seriously,” Sheedy says.
“But then you get back to your life and you move on. You remember what happened and the people we lost and who were injured but you have to move forward.
“Sturt was great in its support of the players who were in Bali and one of the best things I did when I got back to Adelaide was to seek counselling, which half of our group did.
“Everyone is different but it helped me get things off my chest and be able to move forward, to learn to deal with things in front of me, not behind me.”
Sheedy says he also benefited from wonderful family support, including from now wife Kelly, a former Norwood basketballer whom he met through a mutual friend during his topsy-turvy 2002. The couple married four years later.
Sheedy spent another 10 years at Sturt but made it back to the SANFL’s “Big Dance” only once – in 2009 when it lost the grand final to Central by 38 points.
He retired, aged 32, at the end of 2012 – after 255 league games in 13 seasons.
Apart from winning the Magarey Medal, Sheedy captained the Double Blues for six years from 2007-12, won four best and fairest awards (2004, 2006, 2008 and 2009) and was state skipper in 2008-09 to etch his name in history as one of Sturt’s finest players.
Upon retirement, Sheedy was content to focus on building his business, Sheedy Homes – a company he started at 28 and where he employs carpenter brother Justin.
“I was a carpenter, got my builder’s licence through completing a TAFE course and then decided to start my own company,” he says.
But the offers came thick and fast for Sheedy to continue to play at a lower level.
The lure of returning to the country to play purely for fun was too much for the super-fit Sheedy to resist and he signed for Mannum in the River Murray Football League.
“It’s never really been about the money for me and I liked the idea of playing country footy near the river again,” Sheedy says.
“Jeremy Clayton (Port Adelaide’s 2005 Magarey Medallist), who I knew well, was playing there and Jake Bowen, a good mate from Sturt, was playing in the Murray competition and said he’d also come across to Mannum if I made the move, so there was a lot of appeal.
“We turned it into a family adventure every Saturday, with Kelly joining Mannum’s netball team and my family (which included two kids at the time) embracing the community.”
Sheedy won a flag in his first year at Mannum in 2013 and lost a preliminary final in the second before his young family became travel weary.
Athelstone football director Stephen Brown had already sounded Sheedy out about coaching the Raggies, where Justin played, and made a big play for him after he left the Roos.
Having previously rejected any thought of coaching, Sheedy’s family ties this time got the better of him.
“My brother was playing there, along with another mate and Kelly’s brother and her sister’s husband, so I thought if there was ever a time to coach then this was it,” says Sheedy, who started as playing coach before succumbing to a knee injury.
Basing his coaching philosophy on a strong work ethic, elite fitness and good culture, Sheedy enjoyed great success, steering the club from the Adelaide Footy League’s division three to division one in five seasons. The Raggies played in three grand finals and in 2019 claimed a drought-breaking division two premiership – the club’s first A-grade flag in 23 years.
His success in the coaches box captured the attention of SANFL clubs.
Sheedy interviewed with the Eagles and Central at the end of 2019 and is understood to have had the pick of both coaching vacancies following the departures of Sam Lonergan and Roy Laird, who led the Bulldogs to seven flags, respectively.
Sheedy, a players coach who had found a love for the ruthless gig, chose the Eagles, signing a three-year contract.
“I liked their squad and they just seemed
like the right fit,” he says of a club that had slumped to seventh after playing finals for
10 consecutive years.
“Sometimes you walk into a place and it just feels like home and that’s what the Eagles were like for me.
“They suit my personality, that humble, easy-going, hardworking, blue-collar style.
“They are not considered a big, glamour club – they don’t have a large supporter base – but, with me being a private person who doesn’t have Facebook and Instagram and those sorts of social media things, it suits my style.”
Sheedy walked into a tough, unique situation, with Covid-19 soon unleashing itself on the world and pre-season training cancelled in February.
The start of the 2020 SANFL season was delayed by three months, until June 27.
“That was very tough for everyone because no one was quite sure what was going to happen,” he says.
But his new side didn’t take long to hit its straps.
A heartbreaking six-point loss to South Adelaide at Adelaide Oval in round one was followed by eight consecutive wins, including a stand-up-and-take notice triumph against reigning premier Glenelg at the Bay in round five.
The Eagles finished minor premiers with an 11-3 record in a shortened 14-round season and three weeks later were celebrating their first flag in nine years following a 39-point dismantling of bitter rival North Adelaide in the grand final.
Sheedy made it two from two at Woodville-West Torrens – and a hat-trick of personal flags – when his well-drilled outfit upset the Tigers, who finished minor premiers with a superb 17-1 record, in last year’s grand final, thrashing them by 11 goals. It was the first back-to-back flags in club history.
“It’s our finest hour,” Sheedy declared after hoisting the Thomas Seymour Hill premiership cup aloft at Adelaide Oval.
The Eagles had seen enough of Sheedy before the grand final to reward him with a three-year contract extension, despite still being contracted for another season.
The new deal, which was announced in September, ties him to the club until the end of 2025.
Sheedy, who led South Australia to an emphatic 53-point win against Western Australia in the State League interstate clash at Adelaide Oval last season, struggles to comprehend how his coaching journey has unfolded.
He didn’t complete his level two coaching accreditation course until his third year at Athelstone when “someone told me I probably should tick that box”.
Sheedy completed level three, which most SANFL coaches have before they start coaching at State League level, last year.
“That pretty much shows that coaching was something I fell into,” he says.
“I’ve never been the type of person who has looked too far ahead.
“My philosophy has been to just put everything into what I am doing at the time and if I do it well then other opportunities will open up. That’s happened with coaching.”
Sheedy doesn’t consider himself a strategic mastermind, although there are those who would beg to differ after some of the positional masterstrokes he pulled off in last year’s grand final.
“My mindset as a coach is to bring a strong work ethic and culture to a footy club,” he said.
“I want my teams to work harder than anyone else.
“In my early days at the Eagles there were some eyebrows raised about how many kilometres a week we were doing at pre-season training.
“We’d reach 50km, including work with the footy, which is almost unheard of. Sometimes we’d run on a Friday night and then again on the Saturday morning.
“I was trying to build mental resilience as well as physical resilience and show the boys how much the body can take and that if we can get through this we can get through anything.”
One of Sheedy’s great attributesis his desire tolisten and learn.
While he is a high achiever – Sheedy Homes, which specialises in new homes, renovations and extensions, has become a big business – he leans on mentors for advice.
One of his former Sturt coaches, Rick Macgowan, a dual Central premiership midfielder who coached the Double Blues in 2007-08, is his biggest sounding board.
“Rick’s the one I talk to the most, almost every second day,” Sheedy says.
“He was the best coach I had, instilling a strong work ethic among his players, teaching people how to work and train, which is what I base my coaching off.”
Eagles 2021 premiership forward Daniel Menzel views Sheedy as more than someone who preaches hard work.
Menzel, who played under Geelong premiership coaches Mark Thompson and Chris Scott, and Sydney premiership mentor John Longmire, gives Sheedy a glowing endorsement, describing him as the most well-rounded coach he has played for.
“Prior to Sheeds, I had a lot of coaches and they were either really good tactically or really good relationship-wise but I struggled to find someone who was really good at both,” says Menzel, who played 80 games and kicked 143 goals in an injury-riddled AFL career from
2010-19.
“But Sheeds is that man. He is a laid-back character who has great demeanour but he can be tough when he needs to be.
“He understands the game from a tactical perspective and has the ability to bring out the best from the playing group.”
Sheedy wants to be known as a player’s coach, saying he has “genuine care for people”.
“In the world we live in today, much of coaching is about managing people and looking after their well being,” he says.
“Players want a supportive coach and a lot of it comes down to trust. I’ll put my heart and soul into something if I trust someone and I think that works both ways.”
As relaxed as Sheedy appears, he has a fiery competitive spirit that he believes comes from being one of four kids.
“I was always a bit of a psycho when it came to winning at sport,” he says.
“I’ve been known to throw the table tennis bat or tennis racquet when things haven’t gone my way because I hate losing. I’ve always believed that once you’re in something you might as well try to win it.
“I’ve stressed to our players that we have put ourselves in a position to win multiple premierships and we should try to capitalise.”
Sheedy has shelved AFL coaching plans for now, describing being a SANFL coach as “a great job”.
“The beauty of the SANFL is that I get to run my own program and do what I believe in footy,” he says.
“If I go to the AFL, will I be a head coach, probably not, at least not for a long time, having not played AFL.
“I know Chris Fagan (Brisbane) and David Noble (North Melbourne) didn’t play AFL but they were in the AFL coaching system for a long time before they were given their chance at the top job.
“I really like what I’m doing now, combining coaching with my business and spending time with my family and I don’t want to uproot the kids at the moment.
“Down the track, who knows?” ■
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