Essendon coach Kevin Sheedy is concerned that soccer could one day challenge Australian Rules Football as the most popular code in the land. Sheedy said that the growing number of juniors playing soccer meant the sport was set to grow even further in the coming years. ""The thing with soccer is that as soon as you become a very good soccer player in Australia, it means you leave your family for overseas. Which is pretty handy for rugby and AFL - to be quite honest. I would have to say, yes kids don't mind soccer. But I think mother's push them to soccer because they don't want them getting hurt physically. I just tend to think that we do a pretty good job here in Australia with rugby - probably nine million people like rugby and nine million people like AFL and nine million people live in Senegal - that is a pretty good effort,"" Sheedy said.

Q. There are a lot of people talking about the World Cup soccer - have you watched much of it?
A. Soccer is a great game and has great skills. Australians probably struggle in some ways because it is a non-contact game - we generally like rugby league, rugby union and AFL. I am not going to bag soccer because it is a terrific game for kids that want to play it. The shoot-out is something that would demoralise an AFL side. Just imagine if you had a shoot-out between a Carlton, Collingwood, West Coast, Essendon, Richmond etc in a Grand Final when it was a draw. You had a shoot-out and the first person to miss the goal lost the Grand Final - I am sure if they have got that right.

Q. What is your viewpoint on the ball up and how you can get around this whole problem - Flooding...
A. We have had a few coaches at Essendon talking about it - Robert Shaw and myself - and it is pretty serious. We think possibly what they do in the centre square - four and four and no one else is allowed in. Maybe at the start of the ball-up in the centre bounce we have six on six inside the 50m and the two wingmen standing on either side of the square. For stoppages, boundary line or ball-ups around the ground outside the 50m arc at either end - maybe at least have five on five inside 50m and that clears out too many people at the stoppages. I don't think the AFL coaches are going to change it themselves - I think the administrators have got to come in here and have a really close look at developing footy in the next five years. We have the soccer on at the present time and the rugby in 2003. The AFL is up there against the best codes in the world.

Q. Lets talk about James Hird - you had a few comments to say earlier this year on confidentiality - you were a bit disappointed with the medical staff at the time of his injury in Perth...
A. I was at the time because if it was me I probably would have shut everything down. I think in fairness to the medical staff in Perth, I didn't realise James had given permission for them to talk about it in the paper. To that doctor and staff I don't mind apologising - because if you don't know that information and you pick up the paper and you think I don't need my players operation on every page. I did make the comment and it wasn't to hurt anyone's feelings.

Q. Essendon has received publicity lately for having a ‘cast of thousands” in the coaches box...
A.What a lot of people don’t realise is Essendon is two clubs now – VFL and AFL. In the box, we have the VFL side which is Terry Daniher, Kevin Morris and David Flood, we have our statisticians and we have our AFL coaching group - Mark Harvey and Robert Shaw, plus James Hird came in on Friday night. The other thing that we do which is fantastic - our club has given permission for one or two people to come in to raise money for charity. Over the last five to six years we have raised over three hundred thousands dollars for charity.