Sacked Podcast: Kevin Sheedy slams AFL’s double standards over Carlton’s Chris Judd Visy deal
Long before Visy’s $1 million sweetener lured Chris Judd to Carlton, Kevin Sheedy hatched a plan to top up James Hird and Matthew Lloyd with work on the Essendon website — but that didn’t fly with the AFL. SACKED PODCAST
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Kevin Sheedy has accused the AFL of rampant double standards after allowing Carlton’s Chris Judd Visy deal not long after salary cap issues broke apart Essendon’s all-conquering 2000 premiership team.
The Bombers had to suddenly trade a quartet of stars after the league disallowed the club’s deal to allow James Hird and Matthew Lloyd to write for the club’s website, he told the Herald Sun’s Sacked Podcast.
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Blake Caracella, Justin Blumfield, Chris Heffernan were traded away, a season after Damien Hardwick was moved on to Port Adelaide.
Sheedy told the Sacked podcast he still wonders why only five years later the Blues were allowed to pay Judd around $200,000 a season to spruik Dick Pratt’s Visy recycling company.
Sheedy now says the decision to trade those stars tore at the club’s fabric and believes he should have moved on from Essendon in that wake of those contentious trades.
“If I had my time again I would have probably said, ‘See you later’.
“You have got to face your players. It was disgraceful. If you talk about lowest ebb, that’s my lowest ebb.
“Not long after we lost Blumfield, Heffernan and Caracella they wouldn’t let Hird and Lloyd work on the Essendon website but within a bull’s roar Carlton was allowed to be helped by putting Judd to work at Visy.
“Extraordinary — So I watched that play itself out.
“The landscape changes as people see fit. And of course I would love to know how that played out.”
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Sheedy was not in control of contracts at Essendon but, in the space of two seasons, the 2000 side that lost only a single home-and-away game had to be broken apart my him.
“Three of them were overseas and they had just won a premiership a couple of years earlier,” he said.
“I told them the facts. I am not allowed to pick you again at the Essendon Football Club.
“I think Caracella was playing golf in Hawaii. He said, ‘What do you want, coach’.
“How do you find four good players quickly again in a draft? It’s very difficult.”
Asked if it tore the heart out of the playing list, Sheedy replied: “I think it did. You have got to keep the boys together. How do I replace so many premiership players, so many Grand Finals and players with 150-180 games walking out the door.”
The meeting with Hardwick at the end of 2001 was especially difficult.
“I had to go and meet Damien and he was very disappointed,” Sheedy said.
“It was awkward. You have to ring them up the day before a trade period and get them traded out. It’s incredible.”
Hird and Lloyd were to be paid five-figure sums as part of legal third-party deals to be part of the club’s website, with the Bombers arguing they couldn’t work for a rival website because of their club connection.
Judd would eventually reap more than $1 million from the Visy ambassadorship, but had to pay half of that money in the salary cap in 2012 after a changed ruling from the league.
The Visy deal was a deciding factor in his decision to move to Carlton after he left West Coast in 2007.
Judd was the face of the Visy school program and believed his ambassadorship was legitimate.
“What I do for them is largely based around increasing awareness of recycling,” Judd said.
“One of Visy’s major pushes is the use of recycling as a tool against climate change.
“I have done a couple of talks for them … I’m pretty green.”
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