Coaching great Kevin Sheedy set to join Essendon board
Kevin Sheedy is returning his beloved Bombers. The coaching great is set for a new role at Essendon in 2021 and says he’s happy to provide a word of wisdom to help first-year coach Ben Rutten.
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Four-time premiership coach Kevin Sheedy is joining the Essendon board.
The AFL great has accepted an invitation from incoming president Paul Brasher to be a strong voice in football operations and to be a sounding board for new coach Ben Rutten.
It is the first major move by the new president as he sets about restoring on-field respect.
It is seen within the club as a powerful and bold appointment.
“Kevin’s saying hello again, look out,” Sheedy told the Herald Sun on Tuesday night.
“My heart is in the game and also at Essendon, people know that.”
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The 71-year-old Sheedy, who barracked for the Bombers as a boy and then coached the club for 27 years from 1981 and 2007, said he joined the board to help resurrect this once powerful club and to pay back all the club people who supported him while he was coaching.
“There’s a lot of things I need to pay back in the game and at the moment the passion is Essendon,” he said.
“It’s a 150-year-old club and we don’t need to be where we are.
“I don’t expect people to understand that and some of us older people struggle to understand that, especially when talking to past players from the ’60s, and still a couple of premiership players still alive from the ’50s, even the ’40s.
“I think I owe it to the club, I owe it to the fans, they’ve gone through a bit.
“You now we’re averaging about 11th or 12th for the past 12 years.”
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It’s understood Sheedy will replace outgoing director Katie Lio, who is set to announce her intention to resign at the upcoming board meeting on October 15.
Sheedy will be ratified as a director at the October meeting.
He will work closely with football director Sean Wellman, who is up for re-election in October, and director Simon Madden and is determined to make a difference.
The outspoken and passionate Sheedy could become an occasional spokesman for the club.
“When I played I was serious, when I coached I was serious, when I took on coaching a new club, it was a big job the Giants, I was serious and I’m absolutely serious now,” Sheedy said.
“There’s a lot of ways you can shape a football club and everybody on the board has a special knowledge to add to the club and hopefully I can do that in the coaching and footy ranks.
“I won’t be running around the footy department.
“Work has to be done in recruiting to help Adrian Dodoro, we’ve got to know what players we need and also see where the development is with the players we’ve got, because they’re quite talented some of them.”
Asked what he could offer Rutten, he said: “My knowledge and my advice and my energy.
“All I can do is put a menu of thought out there.
“It won’t take me long to work out what he may want to know from what I can offer him.’’
He reflected on people such as Graeme McMahon, Ron Evans, Colin Stubbs, Greg Sewell, Brian Donohoe, Neville Gay, Lionel Krongold and Charlie Payne who had supported him as board directors.
“I owe it to many great players that played at Essendon and the many board members who have lived and died building the club,’’ he said.
Sheedy will continue to work and be paid for his marketing role at the Bombers.
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