30 years of Anzac Day footy: Kevin Sheedy’s phone call which birthed a behemoth

Two bitter foes came together over the phone in 1994, and months later, tens of thousands were turned away from a packed MCG as footy’s biggest non-finals game was born. Here’s how it happened.

It was the phone call that helped change the shape of Anzac Day and three decades on, the man who made it can barely believe how his one idea became a football phenomenon.

It was late 1994, and Essendon’s then full-time coach and part-time visionary Kevin Sheedy was dreaming of ways to make AFL football a more entrenched part of what is arguably Australia’s most sacred day, Anzac Day.

Sheedy was in his garden – where his most fertile ideas have always formed – when an idea dawned on him.

Why not pit his Bombers and the game’s biggest supporting club Collingwood in an annual event to help raise funds and promote awareness to honour the extraordinary service provided to this country from the men and women of the services?

Essendon football club coach Kevin Sheedy in 1995.

He also hoped it would help attract huge crowds and perhaps help to rekindle the spirit of Anzac Day, which had been a little on the wane in certain age demographics.

There had been no football games played on Anzac Day following the Gallipoli landings on April 25 1915 right through to 1960 when an act of Parliament allowed for two games that year.

Matches were played on the day when it fell on a Saturday over the next 34 years, but with no set formula in terms of teams or venues

Sheedy was determined to change that, with memories of a game he played for Richmond against Collingwood on Anzac Day, 1977 – attended by 94,825 fans – firmly in his mind.

So in late 1994 he called an old foe, Collingwood’s then football manager Graeme ‘Gubby’ Allan, with a proposition.

Sheedy and Allan had tangled and virtually come to blows in a wild quarter-time brawl on Grand Final day in 1990; now their phone call almost five years later would help to change the footy landscape.

Sheedy recalled this week: “Gubby and I had been on the MCG before … in 1990 we danced together (in the Grand Final brawl) but we had known each other since the early days when I was playing at Richmond, and he was playing at Fitzroy and then Collingwood.”

The first Anzac Day banner unfurled in front of a packed crowd in 1995.

“I just picked up the phone … and called him.

“I told him what I wanted to do and he said to me: ‘I will organise it straight away, Sheeds … Good idea’. He said: ‘You get your president (Essendon’s David Shaw) on board and I will get mine (Allan McAlister).”

Within days, they were all sitting around a table at RSL headquarters with the RSL’s black-and-white supporting president Bruce Ruxton to seek the organisation’s imprimatur.

“I cold-called Bruce and being a Collingwood supporter, he loved it,” Sheedy said.

“It went through all the corridors of power, and it got up. I am glad it did, being an ex-serviceman (Sheedy did two years of national service).

“I’m very proud of what the men and women have done (in the services) in the history of our country.”

The Collingwood-Essendon Anzac Day blockbuster was born, even if no one was quite prepared for how big the inaugural game would be, nor what the future held.

Collingwood’s then coach Leigh Matthews, who visited The Shrine Of Remembrance this week alongside Sheedy to mark 30 years since the first game, said he knew the crowd in that first game was going to be massive long before he arrived at the MCG.

Leigh Matthews and Kevin Sheedy at the Shrine of Remembrance. Picture: James Wiltshire/AFL Photos via Getty Images.

“For some reason, we decided to get a bus from Victoria Park to the MCG, and you could tell there was going to be a big crowd,” Matthews said.

“This was in the days before reserved seats.

“My greatest memory was … walking into the rooms and out onto the ground and the stadium was full an hour and a half before the game.

“The whole stadium was full, but silent. People knew they had to get there early to get a seat and as we know about 20,000 people couldn’t get into the ground.”

Some had come straight from the Anzac Day march; others had clogged Punt Road in cars to get there and Jolimont station was loading and unloading fans in almost unprecedented scenes for a home and away match.

Some suggested somewhere between 20,000 and 30,000 people were turned away at the gates.

In the end, 94,823 fans officially witnessed one of the most thrilling matches of the modern era, which paved the way for the ongoing success of this game.

Some believe the figure was even higher, with some inside the ground unrecorded.

It was the second highest home and away crowd at the time, but has since dropped to third overall after the 2023 Anzac Day game brought in a crowd of 95,179.

It ended in a pulsating draw where Essendon led Collingwood by 16 points early, then the Magpies claimed the ascendancy to lead by 14 points at the last change, before the Bombers stormed home.

Saverio Rocca, aided by the support of one-year Magpie Dermott Brereton, kicked 9.2 as the game’s most influential player.

The match came down to the final play as Nathan Buckley came storming out of the middle of the ground with a dilemma on his hands – bomb the ball long in an effort to score or pass to a leading Rocca.

Unselfishly, he chose the latter.

Saverio Rocca kicked nine goals in the first Essendon v Collingwood Anzac Day clash.

The Essendon defenders managed to spoil the ball, and the game ended in a gripping stalemate, with the Herald Sun’s chief football writer Mike Sheahan saying: “it doesn’t come any better than what Collingwood and Essendon gave us … We had a drama without a climax, but it would have been selfish in the extreme to have been cheated.”

The game was Matthews’ one Collingwood-Essendon Anzac Day experience, but he has watched it grow from afar with great admiration.

“One of the things with footy is that the team is always bigger than the individual and (this game) is bigger than the sport,” Matthews said.

Sheedy added with a smile: “That was one of Bucks’ best decisions (to pass instead of kicking for goal) … because he helped to create this (legend, with the draw adding to the spectacle).

“When you throw ideas up, you don’t know they are going to be a yes or a no, but when it is sold out continually and people can’t get a ticket … (you know it is a success).

“And (last year) it was 29 years on and it was another draw.”

Originally published as 30 years of Anzac Day footy: Kevin Sheedy’s phone call which birthed a behemoth