Kevin Sheedy says he should have left Essendon five years before he was sacked

KEVIN Sheedy says he won’t return to senior coaching under any circumstance, revealing he should have left Essendon five years before he was sacked.

Kevin Sheedy today Essendon HQ Tullamarine Picture:Wayne Ludbey

KEVIN Sheedy says he won’t return to senior coaching under any circumstance, revealing he should have left Essendon five years before he was sacked in 2007.

Sheedy believes the disastrous 2002 trade that cost Essendon Blake Caracella, Chris Heffernan and Justin Blumfield was so destructive he too should have left the club.

The 27-year Bombers coach returned to the club on Thursday for the first time since late 2007, employed in a marketing role that has no football department involvement.

The 67-year-old says he never expected to be back, but has made the firm decision not to return as a coach anywhere despite his decades of experience.

While he was voted out 10-1 by the Essendon board in 2007, he says in fact he should have followed Caracella, Blumfield and Heffernan out the door.

They were traded at the end of 2002 after Essendon miscalculated the veteran eligibility rules, with Matthew Lloyd saying last year it “ripped the heart out of our footy club”.

“I have never thought about coaching again. This (role) is more important than coaching. It’s like Clint Eastwood saying, “I am over acting, it’s time to direct,” Sheedy told the Herald Sun.

“To me this is about Essendon and moving the club in a new direction. If I had my time again I should have left when I sacked those players, Blumfield and Heffernan and Caracella.

Kevin Sheedy and James Hird chaired off in their last game in 2007. Picture: News Limited

“If I had any regrets, I should have left Essendon earlier, but we were trying to get our list back on track. I thought, if that is the way we are going to run the club, I am out. This wasn’t letting (Gavin) Wanganeen go back to Port Adelaide. This was losing four players (including Damien Hardwick at the end of 2001) all in the prime of their footy careers.”

In those last five years of Sheedy’s tenure Essendon finished 6th, 6th, 13th, 15th and 12th, but he says he stayed because he did not want to break a contract mid-deal.

Sheedy says he will not interfere with the football department, hopeful James Hird stays at the club in the event of doping bans but aware Mark Harvey is the perfect lieutenant.

“I would just say ask Mark Harvey. He got slaughtered in Fremantle, so I would never look at anything like (coaching) and hopefully it doesn’t happen to Hirdy.”

Sheedy will work three days a week in a role pushing the club’s brand, determined to carve out at least another iconic game for the club.

He is working on a game to celebrate the role of Australia’s farmers, saying an annual clash with Geelong could work after kickstarting Anzac Day and Dreamtime at the ‘G.

“I think personally it should be a game on behalf of the nation’s farmers. They have been smashed, not only with price wars, but low prices from overseas, but also by the global economic downturn, then bushfires, then droughts, then flood,’’ he said.

“I would say half my teams have been from the bush. If you went from 200km of farmland from Horsham to Bordertown we had ten Grand Final players — (David) Grenvold, Shane Heard, (Merv) Neagle and (Tim) Watson and then (David) Flood, (John) Barnes, (Glenn) Hawker, (Roger) Merrett, Dean Wallis.”

Originally published as Kevin Sheedy says he should have left Essendon five years before he was sacked