“I look back and I’m thankful for the role models I had,” reflected Matthew Lloyd on the 20th, and final, episode of historical podcast Fabric of the Essendon Football Club.
“I had Kevin Sheedy as a coach, Michael Long, James Hird, Mark ‘Bomber’ Thompson, Gary O’Donnell, Mark Harvey—who was a great mentor to me throughout—and guys like Alec Epis and [the late] Jack Jones around the club, and all the staff. It’s been able to help me set my family and kids up for a great life, and give myself a great life.”
Arriving at Windy Hill as a raw but talented teenager in 1994, Lloyd says he was fortunate that his first senior coach was the legendary—now Immortal—Kevin Sheedy. ‘Sheeds’ lectured Lloyd on how to set himself up financially off the field, while also ensuring that he fulfilled his potential as an athlete, firstly at training and then on game day.
“At our first training session, it was wet and cold at Windy Hill and players were all marking it on their chest,” Lloyd explained. “I marked on my chest and he (Sheedy) had me run 400s. When he asked, ‘Why do you think you ran your 400s?’ I said I don’t know. And he said, ‘If you want to be a great full-forward, you never, ever mark the ball on your chest again.’ That stuck with me. From day one, ‘I have to mark out in front, hard on a lead.’ That become a great weapon for me throughout my career, which it probably wouldn’t have otherwise.
“Sheeds would get me after training, standing on the boundary line, and he’d just pound balls at me. I had to call out a letter on the Sherrin to make sure I was watching it into my hands. He obviously identified me at 16, that I was going to be the future full-forward at the footy club, even though I’d never played there in my life.”
Sheedy wasn’t the only key mentor in Lloyd’s early years at the club, where he was fortunate to play under and alongside a number of Essendon’s most admired leaders.
“Mark ‘Bomber’ Thompson was my first captain, then Gary O’Donnell, and those guys were big on the standards. ‘Prelims (preliminary finals) are the minimum.’ You come to understand, ‘We hate Carlton, we hate Collingwood, just understand how big those games are. And nothing but a prelim is acceptable.’ So straight away, the expectations and the standards, even though I was 16, I realised, ‘Okay, this is what we’re dealing with here.’ It was a great time to walk into the club.”
By the end of his fifth season, Lloyd had kicked 245 goals in 81 matches, and had led Essendon’s goalkicking for three consecutive seasons. However, he was going at roughly 55 per cent accuracy and, at times, his wayward kicking was letting the team down. At least, that was the view of assistant coach, Robert Shaw, who let Lloyd know in no uncertain terms that he needed to improve his routine, and fast.
“I was just missing too many goals that I should have kicked and, at times, putting the team under pressure. But I didn’t have a [set] routine; I didn’t really know back then about routine. There was one team meeting where Robert Shaw said, ‘I don’t reckon you put enough time into your kicking, like a [Jason] Dunstall or a [Tony] Lockett would,’ which hit me pretty hard. I approached David Wheadon, an assistant coach, and also a guy by the name of Jeff Symons, who was our sports psychologist, and I said, ‘I need some serious help here.’
“David was just a guru, like a genius. He put [vision of] Lockett on one half of the screen and me on one half of the screen and he said, ‘What do you see here?’ and I said, ‘With Lockett’s ball drop, there’s about that much of a gap,’ whereas with mine I was dropping the ball from far too high. By the time the ball was hitting my foot, I was hitting the wrong part of the footy. And I was stabbing at the ball, thinking it would help my accuracy, when it was only making it worse. The sports psych helped me with following through and what I was actually thinking about. And that’s where [throwing up] the grass came in, because I was practising here at Windy Hill and that formed part of my routine.”
In the dominant 2000 season, Lloyd kicked 109.60 to become just the third Bomber—after John Coleman (1949-50, 1952) and Geoff Blethyn (1972)—to reach the magical century mark. Then, the following year, he kicked a remarkably accurate 105.36, proof of the old adage: hard work pays off. “I went from being so unsure about myself as a kick, to being bullet proof in a sense.”
The first century occurred on what was a memorable day for Essendon supporters. Against reigning premier, North Melbourne, in the first qualifying final, the Bombers amassed a whopping 31.12 (198) to North’s 11.7 (73), with centreman Joe Misiti running amok with 41 disposals and four goals. Lloyd had entered the game on 94 goals but, much like a cricketer who pokes and prods during the ‘nervous nineties’, Lloyd, too, was feeling the weight of expectation. So much so, the club went to drastic levels in the lead-up to the game to try and declutter the sharpshooter’s mind.
“I got to the nineties and I was there for three or four weeks, because I was placing such a big expectation on it. The club actually flew me to Sydney. They’d arranged with Tony Lockett’s management to spend the day with him. He (Lockett) said, ‘One to 10, 99 to 100, it’s just another number. Get back to the process. The more you go searching for easy and lucky goals, the harder they’re going to get. You got to 90-odd for a reason.’
“I needed six goals in the first final against North and [the MCG] security came and saw me and said, ‘This is going to be the process if you get there.’ I said, ‘I haven’t kicked more than two or three on [North full-back] Mick Martyn, I don’t think I’m going to get six!’ I was on four [goals] at three-quarter time, we were belting North and Sheeds said, ‘We just need to get Lloydy his hundred, because I don’t want this distracting us going into the preliminary final.’ So, the pressure was on.
“I got one nice and early, and then Longy—who’d looked after me so many times, he’s the most unselfish teammate I ever played with—for him to be the one to hit me lace out [was fitting]. As I’m going in, I could see people starting to jump the fence already, so lucky I kicked it! And to do it in the same corresponding final two years straight was a surreal feeling. (Lloyd’s second ton came against Richmond in the 2001 first qualifying final). I was seeing school mates, local footballers, my brothers ran out, so it was a brilliant experience.”
In all, Lloyd kicked a club record 926 goals from 270 games (1995-2009), was a 12-time leading goalkicker and triple Coleman medallist (2000-01, 2003), a five-time All-Australian (1998-2001, 2003), premiership player (2000), and captained the Bombers (2006-09) during one of the finest careers in Essendon’s 150-year history. Midway through his career, he was selected at No. 22 of the top-60 ‘Champions of Essendon’. Then, in 2013, Lloydy became an official Legend in the Essendon Football Club Hall of Fame.
“I wouldn’t have changed a thing. I wanted to play AFL football, I got to play for a great club for 15 years and be a one-club player by the end of it. I still go to Marvel Stadium to see the ‘Lloyd End,’ my kids get a huge thrill out of it as well, so I’ve absolutely had a ball.”
Fabric of the Essendon Football Club has been a weekly 20-episode series powered by Liberty, featuring in-depth chats between club historian Dan Eddy and 20 of the club’s most adored names across multiple decades. You can listen via Spotify, Apple Podcasts and Google Podcasts.
