James Hird - the guy behind the footy great

JAMES Hird is the champion who coodabeen almost anything. Maybe that's why some people are itching to cut him down.

Brownlow winners

POPPIES don't come much taller than James Hird.

He's the champion who coodabeen almost anything. Maybe that's why some people are itching to cut him down -- at least, that's the way his spin doctor and an army of angry Essendon fans see it.

Until the drug scandal that has plagued AFL football this year, Hird was the game's Golden Boy. He played the game brilliantly and bravely for 17 seasons, his last game as outstanding as any of the 252 before. He was one of the rare ones that transcend club loyalties.

It is a small group and its membership is subject to argument, but Hird makes the cut. Line him up alongside players ranging from Cazaly to Coleman, Whitten to Watson, Matthews to Carey, Ablett father and son, Jezza, Hudson and Hart.

He had the champion's trait of rising to the occasion. And other things set him apart when the boots and jumpers are off.

Any knockabout larrikin might fluke being a great player - T. Whitten, D. Hawkins, L. Franklin - but the man one acute commentator dubbed "Sir James" brought pedigree, presence and intelligence to the selection table. And something else besides -- a ferocious determination and self-belief that has become obvious in adversity. Not to mention ambition and a little vanity.

One of many friends Hird has made but not kept during his rapid rise recalls visiting his house in East Melbourne in the 1990s.

Whereas most players favoured jeans and T-shirts, the young Hird literally had "a room full of suits - at least 50 of them," recalls the witness.

When his teammates might have gone for hot utes or Commodores, Hird drove prestige cars supplied by a panel-beating business he'd invested in before he looked to the big end of town. Gentleman Jim was always more Wall Street than Puckle St.

When he was voted one of Melbourne's best-dressed men, he turned up to the photo shoot with three suits from his vast wardrobe. He could be the only Brownlow winner to have as many clothes as his partner.

But there's steel inside the velvet glove. He's going to need it, judging from Wednesday night when he copped the biggest haymaker seen on national television since TV Ringside.

It came from one of the three men the Bombers dropped from a great height after posturing federal politicians broke the peptides story as a stunt.

Dean "The Weapon" Robinson is a former steer wrestler and rodeo clown. There is nothing funny about rodeo clowns except their clothes. They are bullfighters without cape and sword - possibly the wrong personality type to be pushed around. If one thing came out of Robinson's long interview with a slightly sceptical Luke Darcy on Seven's special, it was this: He believes he's been made a scapegoat to protect Windy Hill VIPs.

Robinson was quiet about his former Geelong boss Mark "Bomber" Thompson and the sports scientist Stephen Dank but he gouged Hird at every opportunity.

The huge picture of Hird carefully placed in camera shot behind Robinson said it all - the steer wrestler was out to get Bambi. But, as the AFL and some elements of the media are finding out, Bambi is no easy target.

Hird "lawyered up" months ago, going first to a barrister friend, Nick Harrington, who recommended a firm called Ashurst. One of Ashurst's industrial experts is Steven Amendola, who had worked on the 1998 waterfront dispute with political and corporate spin doctor Ian Hanke.

AMENDOLA called in the former crime reporter, oil-rig diver and pentathlete who confesses he favours "fight over flight".

Since Hanke started, Hird and his supporters have launched what looks to some AFL people as a "phoney war". When AFL chief Andrew Demetriou does talkback radio, for instance, there tends to be an articulate caller on the line with a tough line of questions.

The tactic was to make the AFL sound defensive - and to lay the groundwork for legal action over the findings of the Australian Sports Anti-Doping Authority.

Hird has now retained Julian Burnside, QC, renowned for silky courtroom skills. Meanwhile, the AFL has reportedly earmarked $4 million for the fight. Some phoney war.

Hanke says most footballers never suffer anything like the pressure that Hird has since the airing of allegations about drug links between elite sport and organised crime. Unlike Wayne "King" Carey and Gary "God" Ablett senior, who both had brushes with the law, "Sir James" has rarely attracted negative attention apart from annoying but sympathetic coverage of his many injuries.

In 1999 Dermott Brereton mischievously suggested Essendon had made a dud investment by paying Hird's big salary, given he'd hardly played for months because of the fractured navicular in his foot.

Like Brereton, famous for playing hurt, Hird got up again. Fractured naviculars kill athletes' careers - a similar injury would shoot down All-Australian player Matthew Egan at Geelong in 2007, for instance. But Hird was willing to back his own judgment, abandoned the conventional treatment and went to the US for a radical procedure.

He did whatever it took and it worked. He led the Bombers to a premiership in 2000, winning the Norm Smith medal as best on ground, which marked his second coming as a club champion. Between then and his wonderful last game in Perth in 2007 he became an Essendon hero.

In a brutally democratic game - play it well enough and you're in - Hird is about as close to football royalty as it gets.

At Waverley's monument to the VFL's 1970s ambitions, the Hird name is on the plaque dedicated to the directors who founded the stadium.

That was James' grandfather Allan Hird Sr, an Essendon premiership player and reserves coach who would become club president and VFL director, and had a grandstand named after him at Windy Hill. He was also State Director of Education - and the man who first asked Kevin Sheedy to come to Essendon. His 100-plus senior games were far from his only achievements.

Allan Hird Jr, his son, was no champion but he played briefly in the red and black. He, too, was a senior public servant and became a captain-coach of a Canberra team, where he was also president of the local AFL competition. Like James' mother, a school principal, Allan was a quiet achiever. Their eldest child and only son, on the other hand, was quite an achiever.

But it didn't come easily - a point made by Sheedy, who coached Hird his whole senior career. "A lot of people forget he had to work hard ," says Sheedy. "He was pick 70 in the draft or something - it was tough for him."

In fact, Hird was pick 79 in the 1990 draft. The skinny kid from Canberra already carried injuries from school football and had trouble even getting on the paddock in his first season. Experts voted 4-2 to sack him in 1991, but Sheedy sensed something and got him a reprieve.

By 1993 Hird was a regular "baby Bomber", and in 1994 he won the first of three consecutive best and fairests.

He had done ballet at school, but there was a fighter inside. Sheedy saw a "very determined person" who clawed his way into the team several times.

After sharing the Brownlow with Michael Voss in 1996, Hird was poleaxed by injury for three years. The way he handled this - and his recovery from a shocking facial injury in 2002 - won over Sheedy and everyone who ever played with Hird.

"A very determined person" is how Sheedy sums him up. The wily coach sees the looming battle as Hird "in the trenches" fighting to protect his name on one side. On the other is Demetriou protecting the AFL and David Evans, who stood down as Essendon president after being caught in the crossfire between club and league.

The fact that a longtime Hird patron, businessman Paul Little, has replaced Evans means the coach probably has a deep war chest. Insiders say that it was Little's company Toll that bankrolled the bid to recruit Hird and Thompson three years ago.

HIRD might need all the help Little can give. The best that Essendon can expect from the ASADA report is that its officials were slack in monitoring the administration of an alphabet soup of drugs. The worst case scenario must make the club leadership shudder.

No matter what happens, Hird's golden reputation has been tarnished. People at the top of the AFL ask the same questions as fans in the street. Such as, how well did Hird know Shane "Dr Ageless" Charter, who served two years jail for handling illegal drugs? If so, why - and for how long?

If Robinson is to be believed - and not everyone does believe him - Hird was regularly injected with drugs that are banned for players. Sheedy - and Leigh Matthews, among others - is quick to defend this.

"He's allowed to take peptides and so am I and so's the Prime Minister," says Sheedy. There is no law against vanity and anti-ageing aids - if there were, Sam Newman would be serving life in jail instead of The Footy Show.

A longtime teammate recalls Hird coming back after the 1997 season much bigger and stronger. Much has been whispered about this - Hird briefly weighed 100kg and supposedly ran faster than before - but the teammate laughs at it.

Hird was simply "doing double the weight sessions of everyone else" because he couldn't train on the track.

It didn't help. He broke down repeatedly until 1999. Then, when a lot of people thought he was gone, he came back as good as ever.

Seeing if he can pull his career out of the fire again is one reason why the Windy Hill opera is so compelling.

In his favour is that his players love him as much as their supporters do. But beyond the club, the rumour mill grinds on.

Hird's friends and his critics agree on one thing: No one in football hates losing more than he does. It has affected his judgment at least once before.

In April 2003, he publicly attacked an umpire, Scott McLaren, for "disgraceful" decisions against Essendon.

Instead of apologising immediately, he tried to justify himself - and complained that the AFL Players Association hadn't backed him when he was fined $20,000.

He said something then that resonates now: "I hadn't hurt anybody or been found taking something I shouldn't take, but I felt as if I was in the middle of a police investigation."

Ten years later, he's up to his neck in investigations about things that shouldn't be taken.

An Essendon premiership player who has known three generations of the Hird family says there are several James Hirds.

The brave and balanced footballer. The devoted father and husband. And the ultra-competitor who'll do whatever it takes to win.

"I'm not sure we really know him," reflects the man who's known him nearly 25 years.