Redemption

By Emma Quayle

This article appeared in the December 2000 edition of the Bomber Magazine.

Everyone involved with the Essendon footy club knew there was some unfinished business at the end of 1999. By the end of the 2000 season, the job had been well and truly completed.

If the Essendon players had sat down with a dictionary at the start of the year and chosen the words they wished would come to define their season, it's likely their selections were ultimately fulfilled. Clean, clinical, committed - and successful -were qualities that invaded almost every moment of every Essendon game this season, as the Bombers' year of redemption turned into something more.

Matthew Lloyd will admit that as they returned for their second pre-season under fitness coach john Quinn, one thing remained lodged in every player's mind: the one-point loss that, a few months back, had ended their season against Carlton in the penultimate game of the year. While the loss wasn't discussed openly, says Lloyd, it was probably the reason behind every extra training session, every extra stretch, or the 150 metres Quinn would often tack on to the end of a run. "We knew we couldn't get ti1'ed like that again," says Lloyd.

"If the Carlton game mattered, it was as a stimulant," adds Mark Harvey, who with Robert Shaw, Terry Daniher and newly arrived skills coach Dean Bailey formed Kevin Sheedy's coaching team for the year. "It increased the intensity of everything that little bit. We paired the players off over pre-season for competitive work, and l'll never forget the way Dean Solomon and james Hird went at it. Whether it be on the weights, running or competitive skills, the way those two tried to beat each other just set a tone for the summer, for the rest of the team to say, well, if he's a 20-year-old and he's taking on the captain, I'll do it too."

But while most pre-season eyes were cast firmly towards Hird, it was a true recruit who proved an equally significant arrival. After a one-and-a-half-hour-long meeting with the discarded ruckman, and some urging from Harvey and Shaw, Sheedy decided to devote the club`s last pick in the national draft to ]ohn Barnes, who, since leaving Essendon for Geelong eight years earlier, had never seemed too forgiving. "He had a lot of things, a fair bit of bitterness there, that he had to get rid of," says Harvey.

By the time the Bombers had swept through the Ansett Cup competition and christened their new home at Colonial Stadium \vith what would prove, at that ground, a typical thrashing of Port Adelaide, though, Barnes had already re-settled himself in the Essendon soul. He hurled himself into every ruck contest, moved around the ground like an extra runner and, every Friday, took an increasing collection of young teammates for lunch at a local restaurant, in what became, says Harvey, "a ritual, a superstition. John Barnes motivates his teammates through his body language," says his good friend. "Not many people notice that."

But if the enthusiasm of their ruckman swept his onballers with him, it was a ride they were ready for. After realising at the end of last year, says ]oe Misiti, that they were probably considered their team's weakest link, this year saw the midfield's resolve firm. With it we saw the overhead ability of Justin Blumfield prove increasingly invaluable, an unassuming Chris Heffernan commit to controlling the star opposition onballer almost every week, and a roaming James Hird sometimes slip into the middle to inevitable, usually immediate, effect.

In his second season of football, after playing just two games in his first, the stylish skills of Adam Ramanauskas swept gracefully down the wings, the 19-year-old finishing second to Fremantle midfielder Paul Hasleby in the Rising Star award.

But if one thing made an absolute difference, says Misiti, it was the addition of Jason Johnson, whose Ansett Cup bump on Kangaroo john Blakey embodied the ferocious aggression that his teammates wanted to share. "When you see one of your boys throw himself in there, and just split packs open," says Misiti, "you just want to emulate it." Misiti himself was no slouch either, of course.

The ball magnet had yet another wonderfully consistent season, finishing fourth in the best and fairest and also picking up the award for best player in the finals. He also appointed himself master of the midfield this year, worrying about the welfare of his younger teammates and ringing them on Grand Final morning to make sure they weren't too nervous.

As frustrating as it must certainly have seemed, it was inevitable that the feet of James Hird would find themselves answering the same old questions all year even from his teammates, who, says Lloyd "just kept crossing our fingers that nothing would go wrong." As it happened, the 19 games that Hird played this year saw him dispense inspiration at ease, gather 16 votes on Brownlow Medal night and, after spending preliminary final eve in a hospital room with his sick young daughter, arrive at the MCG eight days later to collect the Norm Smith Medal that, in hindsight, should have already been engraved with his name.

"When you think about certain people and what they've done for you - that's what brings a tear to my eye, because I know it's not easy to support people who are down," an emotional Hird said on radio after the game. "But some people really stuck by me, and those tears were for them, I suppose."

"After Barnesy I reckon Hirdy was the happiest person I saw after the Grand Final," adds Misiti. "I'd never seen a desperate man until him this year."

Hird flew from the country a month later to captain Australia on its international rules tour of Ireland. joining Hird, Blumfield, Heffernan and Damien Hardwick on the overseas trip and collecting a magnum of French wine for his best on ground effort in the opening game of the series was Blake Caracella. The supercool Caracella benefited not only from the frustration of starting some early games on the bench, but also from a loaded forward line that could never be fully covered. Caracella kicked seven typically composed goals in the Bombers' three finals games including three in the big one to finish third in the club's best and fairest count, fourth on the Essendon goal kicking list, and as the only player who just could not seem to attract an opponent.

His desire to work hard was matched by the remainder of the forward line, whose ability to battle matters out at half-forward meant they could score stroll-in goals, and plenty of them.

While big names have long dominated the Bombers' front half, this year they managed to sort each other out, to know who was supposed to go where. In his own return season, Scott Lucas gave Lloyd support, sometimes winning games off his long, left-foot kick, sometimes not, but always demanding a quality defender.

For the first time since the Bombers' last Premiership year, 1993, two Essendon players kicked more than 50 goals. The long arms of the lively Danny Jacobs gave the forward line some new energy for a while, while Mark Mercuri survived an early-season family tragedy to provide regular patches of his finest form. Michael Long was a reliable saviour (kicking five final-quarter goals when round 10's match against Adelaide looked shaky) and bouncing in off the bench, Darren Bewick ran around, kicked a few goals, and finished his career in the same spirited style that he started it. Gary Moorcroft proved a similarly effective shock-trooper: In fact, the Bombers' almost empty injury list meant Sheedy could indulge in using the interchange bench more aggressively than before. In the last game of the year, thanks largely to Paul Barnard, seven of the Bombers' 19 goals came through players who had started the day on the bench.

"I think what happened this year was we were unpredictable," says Matthew Lloyd, whose 109 goals arrived despite his insistence on running up the ground to open things up and a genuine lack of arrogance that saw him set up so many goals for his teammates. "I think what used to happen, last year at least, is that without Hirdy or Scotty there, the opposition knew that I was the player the guys were going to look for. This year we were confident to kick it in to anyone." Except, of course, for Dean Rioli, who arrived for pre-season unfit, unsure whether he wanted to keep playing, but soon found some thinking time. In the final moments of an early season reserves game, Rioli's collarbone snapped; the week after he annihilated the Carlton half-forward line in his second game back, it went again, leaving the wounded Bomber to try, in words, to explain his emptiness at missing the Essendon finals campaign.

"It was a real tearjerker," says Misiti of the note, in which Rioli told his teammates that he wished he could be them. "Nothing was really said at the time; we all got handed it one night before a game and went home. But the next morning in the rooms it was all anyone talked about."

After announcing themselves as one of the league's best back lines in 1999, the Essendon defence nonetheless found an extra edge in efficiency this year, simply through spending so much time together. Hardwick, an All Australian for the first time, attacked every one of his jobs with trademark vigor; Sean Wellman played his usual roaming role and, in the first eight games of his career, Aaron Henneman ran hard and punched harder, lining up against the likes of Barry Stoneham and attacking his opponent with abandon. The prospect of Mark Johnson missing out on the Grand Final through injury seemed, all of a sudden, entirely unfair and Dean Solomon just kept getting better.

"We finished third last year in points against, so we always had a goal of getting that little bit better, of getting to the top, and these players respond well to any sort of challenge that you throw at them as a group," says Harvey. Often at quarter~time or three-quarter time when I spoke to them I'd say that that we had to keep the opposition down to two or three goals, or that we had to help a guy quieten down another player. When you're coaching such an aggressive group of players you have to keep pushing, or else they'll get bored."

But aggression aside, it was the more solemn figure of Dustin Fletcher that would prove the defensive anchor, letting Wellman wander, letting Solomon leap, and finishing the season as the league's best rebounder. In his eighth season of football, and his first as the Bombers' best and fairest, Fletcher was fitter than ever, as composed as always, and even able to escape up the ground sometimes.

"He needs that mental break, every now and then," says Harvey "That's why you see him taking scrcamers sometimes, releasing himself. I've never seen Dustin daunted by anything he comes across; he never looks uncomfortable." When asked for the highlights of his year, Matthew Lloyd talks not about winning runs or records, but the form of his full-back. "People never forget the best player in a Premiership year"

The winning run - strangely, perhaps -proved easier to ignore. In 2000, Essendon had the best-ever start to a season, won the most consecutive games, and the most games in a year The Bombers kicked the greatest-ever finals score, after exploding against the Kangaroos, had the third-highest percentage in league history and, on Brownlow Medal night, polled 116 votes of a possible 132. The fact that they fell only once means that the stumble, against the Western Bulldogs in round 21, is referred to simply as " the loss ".

"You hate to say it, but losing against the Bulldogs probably wasn't the worst thing that could have happened to us," says Misiti. "I don't think we were taking things too easjg but the finals were just about to start and we might have been a bit impatient. It was pretty upsetting at the time - we knew what we'd missed - but it did freshen us up, get us thinking again."

"I don't think we ever sat around and thought, how are we going to deal with winning all these games, because it just happened and we just went along with it," says Lloyd. To his surprise, that attitude stayed as the team watched Carlton beat Brisbane to book its spot in the preliminary final rematch, and as they finally took their revenge on the Blues. "I don't think I really noticed it at the time, but I can't even remember seeing many banners or signs up, even when it was Grand Final week. I think we all knew right from the start ofthe year what we were there for, and nothing was going to mean much until we'd done that."