DEAN WALLIS
Premiership teammate 1993 and 2000, former Essendon and Fremantle assistant coach
Kevin Sheedy has got a lot to answer for – he stopped Dustin Fletcher from being the greatest full-forward in the history of the game. Think about it. The top five goal kickers in the history of the game – Plugger, Coventry, Wade, Ablett, Dunstall – all averaged about four to four and a half goals per game. So with Fletch’s 380-plus games, he’d be on 1600 something goals, 300 ahead of Plugger . . . if he’d had the chance.
Fletch is the prototype of everything you need in a full-forward – speed, agility, and a bloody good kick and mark. Instead, he’s spent his career playing the worst position on the ground, week after week after week after week. The fact he’s survived, let alone become the player he has, is incredible.
Dustin was only a pup when I came to the Bombers in 1987. Because I was from Nhill and Ken Fletcher was too, Ken got me out to his house for dinner to meet the family. I ended up wearing Ken’s old number at Essendon and playing on the wing too, so the old bloke and I shared a few similarities.
But when Fletch came into the Essendon side, I said to Ken, ‘I want Dustin to have my number, does he want it?’ He said, ‘Nah, I’ve spoken to Dustin, he said he wants to create his own dynasty.’
He’s certainly done that.
You can judge a player by how many bad games he’s played. Apply that to Dustin Fletcher – despite him playing on the best full-forwards of all time – and he’s one of the greats.
There are blokes who get one goal kicked against them and become time bombs. They get angrier and angrier and give away free kicks. Fletch can get 15 goals kicked on him and say: ‘Who gives a stuff? We’ll have a beer tonight.’ He doesn’t care about his media profile or getting the credit.
As good a full-forward as he would’ve been, Fletch is uniquely qualified as a defender because of that ‘She’ll be right’ factor. If he gets one kicked on him he won’t implode and go off his head like the world is going to cave in. He just steps up another cog and makes sure it doesn’t happen again.
Yet look at the guys with the games records: Kevin Bartlett, Michael Tuck, Simon Madden – all legends. Poor old lanky Fletch won’t be named a so-called legend of the game, which won’t bother him at all, he’ll just drift off. But it’s wrong – he’s done so much for this game and his legacy is immense.
CHAPTER 9
THE ONE THAT GOT AWAY
Dean Solomon called for a stop to proceedings. We were in his room wrestling and carrying on when he pointed to the TV and turned the volume up. It was 6 am on the Spanish island of Ibiza and we’d been hard at it since the moment we arrived.
There had been a suggestion to have the footy trip in Sydney while the Olympic Games were on, which would have been amazing – not that we were complaining about Europe’s biggest party island. We were bursting with national pride as we watched the opening ceremony. We all stood to attention and sang the Australian national anthem in full voice to honour the occasion. It was some sort of footy trip – Mark McVeigh broke his collarbone jumping off a balcony on to a dance floor full of foam – and I was a mess by the time we started the long journey home.
Making the All-Australian team meant that I was automatically selected for the international rules series against Ireland. James Hird was the captain and on the footy trip I got a first-hand look at why he was the man to lead our country.
After one of our bigger nights where we got home as the sun was rising, I managed to clear the fog in my head just enough to focus on putting one step ahead of the other to get myself downstairs to the pool. All the boys were there except Hirdy.
‘Where is he?’ I asked.
A finger was pointed to the soccer pitch next door. Here was Hirdy in the middle of an intense work-out doing suicide runs. I couldn’t believe it as only a few hours earlier we’d been stumbling home together. The man was a freak and it was little things like that which showed why he was a champion of our game.
On the way home from Ibiza I decided I wouldn’t be joining him against Ireland because I was shot. The premiership celebrations had worn me down and I withdrew from the team. I wanted to be home with my wife and little boy, who was still providing us with some challenges. He was still struggling to put on weight and the feeding issues were continuing, and not being able to get him in a routine was driving Suzie and me around the bend. People were asking us around to their houses for dinner and catch-ups thinking that by this stage we would be on top of things as young parents, but we weren’t. Mason wasn’t sleeping properly because of the feed issues so every day would be a balancing act, with an outing to a friend’s house the last thing on our minds.
The extended break after the season was ideal and I even had an extra couple of weeks off courtesy of the AFL tribunal: they’d given me a two-match suspension for my right hook on Grgic. I wasn’t the only one who missed a few pre-season games. Michael Long copped four matches for his bump on Simmonds, and Dean Wallis was suspended for three weeks for a hit on Melbourne youngster Brad Green.
The most important thing was that when the real stuff started I was there. We showed there was no such thing as premiership hangover with an 85-point thrashing of the Kangaroos.
There was a slight hiccup in Round 3 when Carlton kicked six goals to one in the final quarter to get over the top of us, but it was quickly back to normal programming, and coming into the Round 10 trip to Brisbane we’d won eight of nine games. The Lions were a promising side on the cusp of going to the next level, and their coach, Leigh Matthews, certainly ramped it up in the build-up. He borrowed a line from the Arnold Schwarzenegger movie Predator: ‘If it bleeds, we can kill it.’
The move worked as the Lions played inspired football, jumping us at the start, and from there they were never headed as they won by 28 points. We weren’t too concerned with the loss, although it had people talking about how our air of invincibility was slowly being eroded. Suddenly, teams like Brisbane knew they could beat us.
I’d had an interesting night, getting booked twice for tripping. My long limbs were becoming a problem for the men in white. I got off one charge but copped a week for bringing down Lions rover Craig McRae.
The game of the season came in Round 16 against the Kangaroos. There was always an edge to these contests. It was almost as if they had a chip on their shoulder about us: we were neighbouring suburbs but Essendon had all the money and facilities. The Roos’ base at Arden Street was literally falling down but they took pride in the fact that they could still win premierships – the latest being in 1996 and 1999.
There had been a famous game in 1998 after Sheeds had labelled North administrators Greg Miller and Mark Dawson ‘marshmallows’ in reference to their softness. He did that in the lead-up to the Round 14 game, which we lost, so when we again played off in the qualifying final, the North fans were waiting. Again we lost, and as Sheeds walked the boundary line afterwards he was hit by a hailstorm of marshmallows.
This particular game was also going to be memorable, but for reasons none of us saw coming. The Roos jumped out of the blocks and kicked 12 goals to two in the first quarter. We were shell-shocked as we walked to the huddle, down by 58 points. I was nursing a sore neck from watching the ball go over my head all the time.
I’d heard some impressive speeches by Hird over the journey, but this was one of his best. ‘Don’t look at the 58-point deficit,’ he said. ‘Let’s see if we can break it down and try to strike by the last quarter. Let’s win this second quarter by four or five goals.’
It didn’t work initially, as North got the opening two goals of the second quarter – including a crumbing goal by 210-centimetre ruckman Matthew ‘Spider’ Burton that was an indication of how well they were going – and at the five-minute mark we were 69 points down. The game was over – or that’s what everyone at the MCG thought.
Slowly we started to chip away. Jason Johnson got us going with a couple of big tackles and knoc
ks that showed our intent, and then Matthew Lloyd got hot, kicking five goals for the term. We kicked 10 goals in the second quarter and at half-time the margin was back to 21 points.
The second half was much the same with both sides going all-out attack, which helped us get it back to 14 points at three-quarter time. Generally with big comebacks the hardest part is clawing back into the game and the let-down factor when that is finally achieved – which helps the side that has made the running.
Not this time. We kicked eight goals to three in the final quarter to win the match by 12 points: Essendon 27.9 (171) to North Melbourne 25.9 (159).
It was unbelievable. Lloydy finished with nine goals while Johnson played the game of his life, collecting 31 possessions and kicking four goals. Corey McKernan kicked five goals for the Roos and Saverio Rocca, who’d always given me problems when he was at Collingwood, booted four. It had been the greatest comeback in AFL history.
Adding to the bizarreness of the afternoon, I was reported for shaking a goalpost. It was actually the second time I’d done it, but I got away with the first one, against Brisbane at Docklands Stadium. One of the Lions players was having a shot for goal and I was leaning on the post. I felt it give a little so I gave it another nudge and then rocked it with a bit of force. It was perfect timing and the ball came in and hit the post. The Brisbane players went nuts and as I had the job of kicking in, the Lions fans gave it to me. ‘I’m watching you for rocking the post,’ the field umpire warned me.
The shake against the Kangaroos wasn’t as good, but the umpires were clearly on alert for my party trick and put me in the book. I copped a $600 fine for my efforts.
*
We weren’t the same side in the weeks following that astonishing comeback, which wasn’t totally unexpected: such a high is hard to replicate. We lost the next week against Port Adelaide and struggled into the finals dropping three of our last six games. We still finished on top despite an ordinary loss to Richmond in the final round. In contrast, the Brisbane Lions were coming hard, having won 13 straight games leading into the finals.
We met the Tigers again in the first final and were a different outfit from a week earlier. By half-time the lead was already 34 and the end result was a comfortable 70-point win to us.
There was one problem. Lloyd, who’d kicked his 100th goal for the season in the victory, copped a one-week suspension at the AFL tribunal for headbutting Tigers fullback Darren Gaspar.
It wasn’t the only issue we had heading into the preliminary final against Hawthorn. We had a few sore boys and I was one of them, courtesy of a stress fracture in my shin. The issue wasn’t the pain, as it was just a constant dull ache; what concerned the medical staff was that if the fracture opened I would be in big trouble. Dr Bruce Reid said it was a fingers-crossed job and if it was earlier in the season I would have probably missed six to eight weeks. I stayed off it as much as possible, not training and then hardly warming up in the pre-game.
We initially didn’t miss a beat without our gun full-forward, leading by six goals at half-time. But we only managed one point in the third quarter as the Hawks reduced our lead to 15 points. They kept coming in the last quarter and we were on our knees when Hawks defender Trent Croad had a flying shot from 55 metres in the dying minutes of the game. A goal would have put them in front, and from where I was stationed, it looked like it was going through all the way until the last second when it deviated and cannoned into the post. We’d got out of jail there, and somehow managed to then scramble a goal at the other end to win by nine points.
There wasn’t the usual excitement associated with a preliminary final victory as we had a sense we were limping into the biggest game of the year. Longy, Mark Mercuri and Hirdy had all suffered injuries against Hawthorn that had forced them to sit out large portions of the game. While we were reaching for the bandages, the Brisbane juggernaut was rolling; they smashed Richmond by 68 points at the Gabba in the other preliminary final.
In the lead-up to the 2001 Grand Final there was a sense of an era ending. We knew already that it would be John Barnes’ last game, and on the Monday Wally announced his retirement immediately after. He’d only been able to play one game all season because of injury. It was sad to contemplate life without Wally alongside me. He was one of the toughest players I’d ever seen and had fought his whole career for 127 games in 15 seasons at Windy Hill.
Then, during our main training session on the Wednesday, Longy’s career came to an end when he tore his hamstring 15 minutes into the session. Again I hardly trained, Mercuri’s ankle was touch and go, and Hirdy had aggravated a groin injury in the preliminary final.
Brisbane had an early win in Grand Final week when Jason Akermanis won the Brownlow Medal. Akermanis was a key member of an elite midfield group that included Michael Voss, Simon Black, Nigel Lappin and Luke Power. The Lions also had two big forwards in Alastair Lynch and rising young star Jonathan Brown. Their defence was hard-nosed and led by the Scott brothers, Chris and Brad, with Mal Michael and Justin Leppitsch in the key positions.
We had three new faces from 12 months earlier. Joining Wally and Longy as outs was Darren Bewick, who’d retired after the premiership win. Dean Rioli got his chance after cruelly missing out the previous year because of injury, while a couple of youngsters had emerged in wingman McVeigh and defender Danny Jacobs.
It was going to be a tough contest, and while there were plenty of negatives about our preparation for the Grand Final, the big positive was Lloyd’s return – plus we had a few credits in the bank. We’d been the dominant team of the past three years, we knew how to win big games and surely we were a champion side with enough left in the tank to find a way to win one more game of football.
Surely.
*
Many scenarios run through a defender’s mind in the lead-up to a game. Top of the list is ‘Don’t let your opponent get off to a good start, because if a forward gets a taste early, generally it goes a long way to helping him have a productive afternoon.’
This trusted adage crossed my mind as I stood with my hands in the air on the mark in front of Lynch, who was lining up 15 metres out to kick the opening goal of the Grand Final. He’d already had one shot and missed but it was wishful thinking that he’d do that again.
Lynch had been awarded a free kick for high contact that was touch and go. He’d marked a high ball that hadn’t gone far enough, so the umpire immediately called play-on. I quickly tackled him with a couple of other Essendon players jumping on top, and the umpire picked out something to hand the Lions forward a gift. So once again my opponent was in the thick of it early in a Grand Final.
Stephen Kernahan had kicked Carlton’s first goal back in 1993 and then in 2000 David Neitz had a set shot 30 seconds in, which, thankfully, he missed.
Lynch didn’t miss. A few minutes later Power marked and goaled to have the scoreboard 16–1 in their favour. They were all over us in the opening 15 minutes before Scott Lucas marked and goaled from 50 metres to get us on the board. A nice Rioli pass then set up Jason Johnson for our next major and then Lloyd had his first involvement, getting on the end of a set play that started with me at fullback.
I’d gone long and straight down the middle with the kick-in where Blake Caracella roved the pack and handballed to Lucas, who bombed it forward where Lloyd marked 30 metres out. He put us in front with 45 seconds remaining but the Lions went forward from the bounce and this resulted in a snap from Akermanis that gave them a four-point lead at quarter-time.
The important part for us was we were starting to get into our rhythm, and it was soon apparent that we had the best player on the ground in the first half in Lucas. When he kicked his third goal with 90 seconds left in the second quarter, our lead was out to a game-high 20 points. We’d kicked five goals to one while the Lions had thankfully kept missing gettable opportunities. It was looking like a nice buffer until I watched Black evade a couple of my teammates and send a pinpoint pass on to the chest of Lynch. T
here was nothing I could do to stop it. Lynch’s run of misses didn’t continue and he nailed the shot with 39 seconds remaining.
The conditions were warmer than usual, and the halftime break came at a good time. Having the lead – Essendon 8.6 (54) to Brisbane 5.10 (40) – was a good effort because a number of our prime movers, particularly in the midfield, hadn’t really had any impact. They were going to have to, because it was obvious we had a fight on our hands.
My hunch was right as the Lions kicked the first two goals of the third quarter to get the margin back to three points. Lloydy got his third to stem the flow momentarily, but when Lappin replied 30 seconds later via a stunning left-foot snap from 45 metres, the momentum raged Brisbane’s way.
Five minutes later it was out of control when Martin Pike kicked a left-foot snap from the top of the square to give the northerners a 16-point lead. As it sailed through, my head went down. I was hurting, and I knew a number of my teammates were too as the chance of another premiership faded in the wake of the Lions kicking seven of the last eight goals. Something special had to happen.
A special footballer produced it for us, with Lloydy kicking a brilliant goal from 45 metres out wide on the forward flank. The margin was back to 10 points with 13 minutes to play.
The problem all day was that Brisbane continued to find answers. This time, a poor umpiring decision to allow them to take advantage from a free kick – even though everyone clearly stopped – resulted in a goal to Tim Notting.
For a few minutes the game then hung on a knife’s edge with Brown and Akermanis both hitting the post. I was hoping these near-misses were a sign that Brisbane had wasted their best chances to ice the game and we were about to get our shot at victory. Sadly, I was wrong. Three goals in four minutes by the Lions ended my dreams of a third premiership. The last five minutes of the Grand Final were the toughest of my career as that realisation sank in.
Fletch Page 10