Senior-coach in waiting Mark Harvey thought his time had finally arrived when he heard Essendon senior coach Kevin Sheedy had collapsed on a Perth beach last weekend – or so rumour would have it. Now all is well with Sheeds, Harvey thought it was time to make his true feelings known when word filtered through that the coach was allegedly on his last legs.

""Yes, I drove straight to the club to see if my key would open the door to his office,"" Harvey laughed. ""No, nothing in the rumour that I started moving in. I rang him a couple of hours afterwards and he was fine and he said to me ‘good try’. He was blaming me for the whole thing.""

""He is alright – a bit of slip, slop, slap and he would have been fine. Instead he sat in the sun, melted, got up and fell over. The first we heard it was all a bit more serious but he is fine. He is bouncing around now and a little bit embarrassed by it all. He just needs to keep off that occasional red wine.""

It Iis understood that a steady stream of water bottles have appeared in the senior coach’s office during the week. Harvey said he knew nothing about it.