Sheedy is renowned for his staunch support and promotion of the game, his club, everyone who works at it and most particularly his players. He will throw challenges at each, he will put it out there for public consumption – but he is only ever trying to find that bit of improvement. He says Tom Hafey helped shape his attitudes.
“Tom just had a wonderful warmth for his players,” Sheedy said. “He could be hard but in the end he just wanted the best for them and the club. That was something that struck me from the very first moment I walked into Richmond Football Club.”
“I suppose the passion to play and want to be involved in the game are two of the things that I really did learn from Tom Hafey. Tom just has a magnificent passion for the game. Here he is today, over 70 years of age, and he is still trying to tell the AFL what to do and where to go.”
Hafey started coaching at Richmond in 1966. He remained in the coaches box for the next 22 years. He left Richmond in 1976 and followed that with stints at Collingwood, Geelong and Sydney. All up he coached for 23 seasons. This year will be Sheedy’s 23rd Essendon. There records as they stand are remarkably similar. Hafey won 336 of his 522 games, lost 182 and drew four. Sheedy has won 338 of his 521, lost 177 and drawn 6.
“After Saturday night it will be a draw – we will have both coached 522 games and have four Premierships. It has been a long time coming. It means I can actually sit down and talk with him now and not feel like I am coming from a long way behind,” Sheedy said.
“The game has changed a lot since Tom was coaching – today we have a fully professional game. The head coach of a football club now has got to take responsibility for the coaching group and together with the football manager a whole department of people.
“The greatest thing Tom never had to do was go and tell Royce Hart, Kevin Sheedy, Kevin Barlett and Francis Bourke to retire. He left Richmond when it was about time for the group to retire – the positive about Tom leaving the Tigers was that he didn’t have to hurt anyone. I’m very envious of him.”
Sheedy recalled what it was like as a player to incur the wrath of Hafey after a loss.
“When Tom Hafey lost he was totally annoyed – there was just no forgiving losing. You have got to look at how you get your team up for the next week, so how long do you get down on yourself and brood over things before you start working on that? We used to walk across the park from the MCG to the Richmond clubrooms after games and I used to try and guess what day of the week he might start to melt a bit after we got beaten. Would it be three days or would it be four before he began to forgive the players? It depended how bad the loss was,"" Sheedy said.
“You can’t do that as much today because you sometimes have a short week before games and you are flying in and out of cities around Australia. You just have to quickly look at where you played well, where you didn’t and get the whole group – players and coaches – looking towards the next game. You have to be like that because everyone works very hard.
“My worst performance ever was after the 1996 preliminary final. I wouldn’t want to see a replay of what happened after that game. I’d have to say that is a person I don’t ever want to meet again.”
As usual, Sheedy was quick to inject some humour into comparisons between the two.
“Mentally I’m fitter than Tom but I can’t say my physique is as good as him,” Sheedy laughed. “I recently told Tom that a lot of people walking around Melbourne are extremely annoyed with him – a lot of 70-year-olds who are envious of that body of his. There is only one way he is going to fix the problem and that is to take off those skin-tight T-shirts and start wearing some sloppy outfits. Basically, every time he does a push up, I think of a new idea.”
