Last season prior to Essendon's Round 18 clash against Brisbane at The Dome, Sheedy came out and made a bold statement that there would be “no rules” in that match. Heading into this encounter against the Lions his attitude is a little more placid. ""We are on their turf so I better be careful! As long it is a sell-out and the Brisbane people continue to enjoy their footy. We will give our best performance. I don't care about rules anyway - rules are just there to keep people in jobs,"" the four-time premiership coach said.
The match committee will meet tonight to select the squad to travel to Brisbane and Sheedy almost guaranteed new recruit Damian Cupido will make his debut for the team. ""His performance has been quite good and he will most likely get selected. When a club let you go, you want to play well against them. It is the way I felt when I first coached against Richmond - all I wanted to do was win,"" Sheedy said.
""He is a pretty good player and I think he will be a better player than when he played for Brisbane. He was very, very unfortunate up there - he got injured a lot and it was a very hard side to break into. He sees an opportunity here and we have to make sure that he is better than Caracella. The deal in the end is that we have to replace Caracella who was a premiership player for us and hopefully Cupido is equal to that task. He is very young and has years on his side which is good. If Cupido can be as good as Caracella I will be very pleased.""
Sheedy said the match committee will consider the heat factor when selecting the team and would even contemplate bringing in draftee Darren Walsh. ""Walsh could run all day if he needed to. He is the sort of player eventually that will give us run through the mid-field. Winderlich will as well, but he is not ready yet. Bannister is also in the mix."" Sheedy also commented that Scott Lucas will most likely play in defence in the absence of Dustin Fletcher and Mark Bolton. Both are unavailable due to suspension.
