SACKED: Brendon Goddard reveals how he was sacked by the Bombers, maintains Essendon-34’s innocence
Brendon Goddard has opened up about the ‘bomb’ that had him weighing up early retirement and left him crying in his car for over an hour. But the year that followed was one of the most enjoyable seasons of his career. SACKED PODCAST.
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Brendon Goddard knows his competitive spirit means he could have played to 40 and still railed against his eventual exit from the game.
Like AFL games-record holders Michael Tuck and Brent Harvey before him, leaving the only game he knew was always going to be a wrenching moment in his life.
Yet like Harvey, Goddard left AFL football with petrol still in the tank.
Just on 18 months after he was sacked by Essendon in August 2018, Goddard has forgiven but not forgotten.
He remains great mates with the men who sacked him, including list manager Adrian Dodoro and football boss Dan Richardson.
It doesn’t mean he will stop reminding them they bungled his exit in a dramatic week leading into Round 23, 2018.
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Goddard can still recall in forensic details how his sacking went down and he believes it is instructive for clubs attempting to ease their elder statesmen into retirement.
If he sounds like he is full of bile, you don’t know Brendon Goddard.
He just might be the most honest man in footy, happy to set the record straight with amazing recall how the biggest moments in his career went down.
“Speaking to other guys, it is a regular thing. How do footy clubs screw it up? Speak to Dal (Nick Dal Santo) and he had an experience, Rooey (Nick Riewoldt) has had an experience, Joey (Leigh Montagna) and you hear about Boomer (Brent Harvey),” he said
“Like, how do you continually get it wrong? As brutal as footy clubs are, and their environments, they are not willing to have the hard conversations and honest chats. As older guys that's what we want. We only want communication honesty and transparency, it is really not that hard, is it?”
GODDARD THE COMPETITOR
Nobody could ever accuse Brendon Goddard of not giving bang for buck to Essendon.
He arrived in 2013 and won the best-and-fairest, then came third (2014), fifth (2015), fourth (2016) before a second-placed finish behind Joe Daniher in 2017.
So as a 2018 season in which he would finish 10th and play every game came to a close, he knew he was good enough to play on past 33 years of age.
“My wife said when I got sacked that it wouldn’t matter if I played for another four or five years, you would have been filthy about not being able to keep going because you are stubborn and competitive,” says Goddard.
“But it was a bitter pill to swallow because I feel like I am really honest with myself.
“If I had felt I was done I would have said it, but mentally and physically I was in a good position.
“I hadn’t had my head in the sand. You finish a four-year deal and then are on one-year deals and we had had good honest chats. Then just towards the end of the year the waters got a bit murky …
Goddard says manager Craig Kelly instigated a meeting with the Essendon hierarchy a fortnight before the end of the year to get a straight answer on his future.
“He organised a meeting with myself and (TLA’s) Adam Ramanauskas, Adrian Dodoro and Dan and Woosher (coach John Worsfold) and on the surface everything looked pretty good. We walked out of there and I went to training, I jumped in the car at the end of the day and called ‘Ned’ and he said, “I think it was all pretty positive”.
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“And I go, “Nup, I don’t like it”. I picked up on a bit. Woosher did most of the talking and I picked up on his mannerisms. Dan was being very diplomatic. On the surface it was, “Good, but we can’t tell you until the end of the season”, and this is where I am not bitter but they could have handled it better.”
On the Monday before Essendon’s Friday night Round 23 clash against Port Adelaide, Goddard was working out with good mate Zach Merrett.
“It was all looking positive verbally and Woosher walked past me and “Junior” in the gym and said, “Mate, when you are finished come and have a chat”. I thought it was a pretty casual invite so it must have been positive because if it was anything bad he wouldn’t be so blasé about it.
“I went up there and Woosher and I are fine but he said, “We are not going to offer you a contract”.
“As you can imagine I just went all silent and Woosher was in an awkward position and I said, “I am not going to say thanks because I don’t f***ing mean it. I was pissed that Dan wasn’t there and a good mate in Adrian wasn’t there.
“So I just walked out in a headspin as you could imagine and walked straight to my locker, grabbed my stuff and a few of the boys were going 'we were only halfway through the day, I packed up my stuff and went home.”
Essendon’s argument to Goddard was that they needed to fast-track defenders Aaron Francis and Mason Redman, and while he was there it would hold up that process.
His counter to their threat that he might play VFL at times if he played in 2019 was this: “I won't be playing in the VFL because I will be performing. I will back myself in”.
“They knew in the meeting but they just didn’t want to tell me because Ned would have bitten their heads off. They talked about stats but I had hardly missed a game at Essendon and said, “Are you slowing down”, but that was BS because I was running better than I ever had. Better than 90 per cent of the blokes on the list. All my teammates wanted me to go on. A few of them actually went into Woosher because they got an inkling I wasn’t going to get a contract. They went in and said, “We need BJ to be playing”.
“I was disappointed but Adrian called me … maybe after the season and he apologised and said, “I couldn't sit there and I couldn't tell you”.
“He was honest. He said, “I am not proud of it”. Dan was the same. Dan came around on the Thursday night and he said the same, he couldn't sit there. We had a couple of beers on the Thursday before our game, and reminisced about old times and we both shed a tear.
“Adrian said it was one of, if not the hardest decision, he had to make in his career at Essendon to give me the arse essentially.”
THE ASADA YEARS
Instead of footy trips and premierships, Goddard’s unforgettable experiences at the Bombers were punctuated by waiting with bated breath for the result of ASADA and CAS rulings.
He still believes Essendon would have won a flag if not for the peptides saga given the talent on their list.
Quoted on a Perth radio station recently saying he had wasted the back half of his career, he says there is an important difference between regretting his time at the club and believing he missed a flag window.
The night before his free agency deal with Essendon was announced Goddard flew to America for a training camp in October 2012.
Four months later in February 2013 Essendon had self-reported for issues that would later see players banned for 12 months.
The architects of that plan were “biochemist” Stephen Dank and fitness boss Dean “The Weapon” Robinson.
Within days Goddard picked up a vibe that Dank had been up to something outside of the norm in the previous season.
“I met them in Colorado and I remember the boys joking. Danksy’s name was brought up a little bit but and it was a bit jovial but I could tell it was serious. There was an issue. And then the Weapon’s name was brought up. He was there for two months before he left.”
“I don’t know the details and it was a blur but there was the phone call and the Australian Federal Police investigation that started in Canberra that drip-fed down to Andrew (Demetriou) and the sad thing is you are never going to get to the bottom of it. Never. The truth is never going to come out and gee, I wish it did. Because it would show the boys are totally innocent. They are all adamant on it.
“The guys are certain of it and in hindsight, take a deal like the Cronulla boys but the only reasons the Cronulla boys took the deal was because they were guilty. The boys said we are innocent, we firmly believe this.
“The senior guys and voices of the club, guys like Jobe, were not admitting guilt when I am not guilty. Why the hell would I do that and the advice was to tell the truth. All the boys morally did the right thing and told the truth and in the end, sh** I wish they had lied because they would have got off.”
Early in the 2012 season a besieged Essendon beat West Coast and Fremantle at Subiaco, with Jobe Watson being booed with every touch.
“They are two of the best wins I have ever had in my life. Extraordinary. One of the best feelings ever,” says Goddard.
By August 2013 Essendon’s players had been booted from the finals after admitting catastrophic governance failings.
“I don't think I watched much of it. I don't think any of us did. Once we found out we booked a trip to Vegas and left straight away. We didn't want to be anywhere near it because we were so angry and frustrated.
“At no point during that year or at least when it started did we think it would come to a point of us not playing finals or get to where it did four years later.”
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BOMBER, HIRDY AND WAITING IN HOTELS
Then came the bizarre and magical Bomber Thompson season, where the former Cats coach let it all come out despite what would later be revealed to be deep-seated drug issues.
“Bomber was great,” says Goddard.
“I would have loved to have got Bomber in his prime. I didn't see the best of him for obvious reasons, but he was great. There was so much like Ross (Lyon), the way he conducts himself at the club. When he was there, he was on. As wired as anyone, as prepared as anyone, like Ross was. He would walk around with a whistle at training like Ross and stop play: “I am not happy with that, do it again”, or “Keep doing it until you get it right”. I loved that. He was a great teacher.”
By the last week of the 2015 pre-season Essendon’s players were awaiting the result of an ASADA anti-doping trial that had consumed that summer, aware their season rested on the result.
“We were at the Botanical, all the guys waiting for the decision and the (accused players) were at the Hotel Pullman,” Goddard recalls.
“It was the week before Round 1 and Fletch (Dustin Fletcher) would text (footy staffer) Johnny Elliott, the guy in our room, so as soon as we found out (the players were cleared) the room just erupted. Outrageous. There were guys crying, hugging each other. And then we had a few beers, and we had to tell a few of the guys in the room to pull up, because we had a game in six days in time in Sydney.”
Yet the WADA appeal – sending the players to a Court of Arbitration for Sport hearing the following January 2016 – would effectively end Goddard’s premiership dreams.
“We were at the club,” says Goddard of the wait for that early-morning January 2016 CAS ruling.
“We were waiting for the decision, the boys directly involved were off site, and I am not sure what time it was but we didn't know what to do,” he said of the guilty verdict that banned 34 players and required 10 Essendon top-ups.
“Most of us packed up our bags. I went to the car and cried for an hour. Zachy Merrett said in (a recent article about Goddard) that we sat there and my dreams were shattered. Well I did. To think about everything in that hour after a bomb just going off to think about everything … ‘F*** it, I will just retire now, what’s the point’. But two days later I dust myself off and come back to the club. Became the captain.
I have said it before, it’s one of the most enjoyable years I have had. I learnt a lot about myself that year because taking away those expectations helped me settle down a bit. But it was a terrible situation.”