I didn’t want that because I was already regretting not having got involved earlier. I wasn’t any sort of patriot but playing for Australia was one of the best things I’d done in my career.
KEVIN SHEEDY
AFL great and longest-serving coach in Essendon history
No-one ever talks about how a coach observes. They always talk about your win–loss record, your training moves. But one of the important things is observation. It is an art for a successful coach.
Dustin Fletcher was not a hard person to coach. I have always put him right up there with some of the best – as a player and a person. In fact, from 1993 until 2007 he was the least of my worries, which is why he never got dropped. Fletcher was never out of my side at Essendon.
We never really felt All-Australian selectors got it right with Dustin. We used to laugh at them as they overlooked him for Steve Silvagni. There were at least a couple of years where Fletcher should have been key back-man in the All-Australian team. Too many Carlton people on the selection panel . . .
Fletcher won Essendon’s best and fairest in 2000 but he was very unlucky not to win it in 2007 too. I think Hirdy won it off him in the last match. James’s last game of his career might have cost Fletcher a best and fairest. Fletch was very unlucky in some of the medals and awards.
He could have easily played at full-forward. If we didn’t have Lloyd he would have been up there for sure . . . but go and ask anybody how hard it is to find a fullback.
By the time my final season rolled around I’d been observing Dustin Fletcher for almost 30 years.
I’d observed that at training sessions he was smart like Kevin Bartlett. Dustin didn’t use too much energy at training, he kept it for the games. Bartlett got to 400 games because he never killed himself at training. Dustin was the same – in it for the long haul.
I observed that Dustin was a reminder that skinny people play a long time in Australian Rules. Look at Michael Tuck, Garry Wilson, Robert Flower. Keith Greig . . . add Fletcher to the list of lean men. My theory? If you can’t catch them, you can’t kill them.
I observed of Dustin what I did of all champion players: you ask their opinion. When Bruce Doull talked at Carlton, he was heard. And when Fletcher spoke at Essendon, the whole place listened.
One of Dustin’s greatest moments I felt was when he captained Australia in the international rules in 2005. He was away with his wife in England at the time. I rang him and said: ‘Fletch, I need you to play for Australia, otherwise I don’t think we can win.’
Dustin said he would have to talk to his wife about it and ring me back. We were prepared to pay to keep him in Europe for a couple of weeks until the series started. Instead he got on a plane and came back to Melbourne with his family to see them home safe and sound then flew straight back over with the team. Talk about circle work? That is the best circle work drill I’ve ever seen!
Dustin was appointed Australian captain with Barry Hall. We gave them one match each – an opportunity to lead which they never would get at club level – and we won the series. Dustin was wonderful in goal, his performance and leadership were magnificent.
It was great to give him that opportunity because he was jammed up at Essendon with some of the best captains you will have in Hird, Thompson and O’Donnell. Dustin was just sitting back in the goal square collecting full-forwards on his way to becoming an Essendon all-time great.
But on that occasion he really showed what leadership was about.
CHAPTER 12
END OF AN ERA
For some reason I always thought he’d find a way.
There had been numerous times over the journey where rumours had surfaced that Kevin Sheedy was on the outer with the powers at Essendon. Every time, the veteran coach would ride it out and find a way to reinvent himself and the game plan.
This time he didn’t.
Even with all the speculation that had built up as the 2007 season progressed, I was shocked when the club announced in July that the board had decided not to offer Sheeds another contract. We still had six weeks of the season to go and were hanging in to the finals race, but it wasn’t enough and the club thought this was the best way to bid an extended goodbye to the man who had coached the Bombers for an incredible 27 seasons since 1980.
I didn’t want Sheeds to leave. The fact that James Hird had also announced that this was going to be his final season added to my disappointment. Understandably, it made me think about where I was at as a player and servant of the club, and what my future held.
Funnily enough, I was actually enjoying my best season in years. Sheeds had lured former Brisbane fullback Mal Michael out of a short retirement and his arrival had helped to release me from the goal square, which had been my chief domain in seasons gone by.
Moreover, I was the fittest I’d been for a number of years and had stripped off some excess weight. The changing nature of the game was a factor in my weight loss: the days of being a 100-kilo fullback – that was my highest playing weight in 2000 – and standing the monster power forwards were gone. Pace off the mark had become more important in the modern game, which meant that Sheeds had matched me up with a number of different-sized forwards in recent years, including the 171-centimetre Eagles goal sneak Phil Matera.
We’d started the season in promising fashion, winning three of the first four games, and at the halfway mark were sitting on seven wins. Included in that were back-to-back one-point wins over the previous year’s grand finalists, Sydney and West Coast. We were nicely placed in fourth position.
There had been a significant personal highlight in Round 4, when I kicked what I consider to be the goal of my career, a torpedo punt that was later listed as the fifth longest in AFL history.
It came in the third quarter against St Kilda under the closed roof of Docklands Stadium. Matthew Lloyd had gone back to take a free kick in the centre square and was looking around to pass it but found our forwards were all covered. I called out for the handball as I ran past and my first thought was to have a shot with a drop punt. I quickly realised I mightn’t make it so changed to the torpedo. This was a high-risk ploy – generally ‘torps’ are better executed off a single step, not on the fly while travelling at pace – but it was too late to change tack now. I took a final look around me, steadied myself and launched.
The connection was sweet but it wasn’t a high kick, and many who saw it at the time thought it’d fade fast. Not so. The torp just kept going and going and going, maintaining velocity and speed all the way. In the end, it easily cleared the goal line and ended its epic journey five rows back into the crowd.
I was pleasantly surprised with what I’d just produced – the next day’s newspapers reported that the kick went 76 metres – and in the moment itself, my celebration was an interesting one. I raised my arm to salute the goal and the huge roar of the crowd, then started running back to the other end. That’s when my opponent, Justin Koschitzke, whooshed in and whacked me in the side. I’d come into the game with a cracked rib and was wearing a guard, but his bump hit me in the worst spot and knocked the wind out of me. I hunched over for a few seconds to try to catch my breath and absorb the intense pain. A couple of trainers got out to me and immediately suggested I come off. So there was no basking in the glory of a career highlight. I actually didn’t even get the chance to watch the replay on the big screen because I was wincing in agony on the bench!
It was an omen of sorts: unfortunately, the wheels fell off in the second half of the season. We found a way to win the game after Sheeds’ announcement, against Adelaide in Round 17, but lost four of the last five games to finish 12th.
Once again I had found myself in trouble with the judiciary, copping a one-week suspension for striking Geelong’s Kane Tenace. Beyond that, I struggled over those last few rounds for motivation. Sheeds had coached me since I was a 17-year-old rookie and I’d had Hirdy alongside me as a teammate for the same amount of time. For 14 years both men had seen me grow up and been
a massive part of my life. Now, they were leaving, and I found myself in unfamiliar terrain and floundering.
It capped off what already had been an emotional year. One of my best mates, Dean Solomon, had left the club and been traded to Fremantle. Another had made an incredible comeback that moved the entire football world. After a long war against cancer, Adam Ramanauskas played his first game for more than two years, returning to his beloved Bombers and a hero’s welcome from our supporters, in Round 14 against Geelong.
I’m not sure of the exact percentage but I know the odds were extremely long on Adam coming back and playing again after three times battling his cancer. To see first-hand what he went through with his body to get it back to a position where he could play AFL again was nothing short of inspirational. You can claim premierships, win games and play well yourself, but to see someone go through what Adam did and then play top-line footy again is on another level altogether. Being on the ground that day when Adam made his return is one of the top three things I have experienced in footy.
Meanwhile, the season finished in a fitting triumph for another much-valued teammate. True to form, Hirdy went out in style, pipping me at the post to win his fifth Crichton Medal as Essendon’s best and fairest for the season. I was honoured to finish second – my old mate got me by two votes after being awarded best afield in his final game against West Coast.
I also picked up my second All-Australian selection, which was a nice reward for one of my better seasons. These acclamations gave me confidence as I entered what reporters were now insisting on calling the ‘twilight’ of my career – even though I had a lot more in the tank. At least, that’s what I thought.
My new coach wasn’t so sure. And I wasn’t so sure about my new coach.
*
Matthew Knights was the coach of our VFL side, the Bendigo Bombers, so I hadn’t had a lot to do with him during his time at Windy Hill. But now he’d beaten my premiership teammate Damien Hardwick at the last hurdle to land the Essendon senior coaching gig for the 2008 season.
It was always going to be tough following in the footsteps of Sheeds, a larger-than-life legend of the game who had coached the football club for 27 years and won four flags. And I knew Knights, a Richmond Tigers veteran of 279 games, would want to stamp his own authority on the place.
That’s why I was so damned nervous as I approached the café. Knights had summoned me to a meeting to talk about the year ahead.
After we exchanged pleasantries, the new coach got down to it. Looking him in the eye and listening to what he was saying, it quickly became obvious to me that tough times lay ahead. The bottom line of what Knights was telling me was that he was keen to promote youth, and that senior players like me no longer had any guarantees. The new coach didn’t come out and actually say I was going to play reserves, but he certainly insinuated in a roundabout way that that particular scenario was possible if the circumstances warranted it.
I was stunned. I knew my birth certificate said I was 32, but I was playing like a 22-year-old and my recent record showed it. Despite that, it was the young players coming through the ranks – many of whom ‘Knighta’ knew well from coaching them in Bendigo – who would be given every opportunity to play in the new season and generate a new era for the Bombers.
What disturbed me most was that Knights seemed to have thrown Essendon’s older players – Matthew Lloyd, Scott Lucas and me – into the same group. The way he spoke of us was almost like we were one person, rather than individuals. To him, it seemed, we were a symbol of a past era.
I was worried about the plans he had for the old group, but I decided there was only one way forward and that was to keep doing what I’d been doing, train how I had over the previous summer and do everything in my power to prove myself worthy of getting a game in 2008.
*
The Knights era started promisingly enough, with a thumping 55-point victory over North Melbourne in Round 1. The reigning premier, Geelong, brought us back to earth the next week to the tune of 99 points before we ran down Carlton in a high-scoring shootout.
That game against the Blues gave the clearest insight yet into the new coach’s style. It was 23 goals to 21 and we won the game by 16 points in as free-flowing an affair as I’d played in for some time. Given my defensive background, this didn’t sit comfortably with me.
The 2008 squad had spent a lot of the summer working on our attacking style and that’s what Knighta really emphasised. The defensive side was talked about, but it was way down the priority list. And certainly, when our game clicked, Essendon was as exciting as any team in the competition, playing with speed, flair and slick ball movement. But when it went back the other way we were vulnerable.
Sure enough, the wins dried up and eight straight losses had us all scratching our heads. In a three-week stretch beginning with the Anzac Day game we found ourselves on the wrong end of consecutive thumpings, losing by 73 points to Collingwood, 64 points to Port Adelaide and finally – and worst of all – 91 points to Sydney.
Now the heat was on Knighta. The new coach was in an unenviable position. Whatever he did with the Bombers’ playing style was always going to be compared with the coaching legend he’d replaced, which simply wasn’t fair.
We eventually snapped out of the rut and proceeded to win six out of our next seven games. Included in that run was a Round 13 victory over Carlton, which ticked off another personal milestone. To be honest I never got too worked up about the big occasions, but this one was a family celebration: Dad and I now owned the record for the most VFL/AFL games played by a father–son combination, with 552 games between us, and every one of them played in the black and red of Essendon.
I often get asked why I didn’t inherit my father’s No.21 and instead went with No.31 for my whole career. The truth is that when I first arrived at the club I had this feeling that I was ‘Ken Fletcher’s boy’ rather than ‘Dustin Fletcher’. Like any young man starting out, I was desperate to carve my own reputation. I’d grown up as ‘the son of Ken’ – people around the club even jokingly call me ‘Kenny’ – and I thought that taking my own number might give me the opportunity to create my own identity.
Dad never put any pressure on me to take 21, and when I got to the Essendon firsts Dean Wallis had the No.21 on his back anyway. There was a nice symmetry to that link as well, given that Wally came from Nhill – the town Dad had been born in a generation before.
Normally young players get allocated numbers in the high 40s and 50s when they first arrive and then come down in later years. Ricky Olarenshaw was given No.47 when he arrived but because he wore it in the 1993 premiership win he then kept it for his whole career.
Anyway, with the number 31 having served me pretty well for 288 games, it never crossed my mind to change.
*
The 2008 season didn’t finish the way we’d wanted after we were unable to maintain our mid-season form. We lost our last four games of the year, including a horror 108-point defeat in Round 22 to St Kilda that I missed through injury and watched from the sidelines through my hands and with a heavy heart.
While that was hugely disappointing, there were encouraging signs that the next wave of kids, such as Angus Monfries, Jobe Watson, Paddy Ryder and Brent Stanton, were going to be good players.
The rise of this next generation meant more of my older mates were hanging up the boots. Jason Johnson, who’d been such an influential figure in the 2000 premiership run, had been on the outer all season with the new coach and, after 184 games and Crichton Medals in 2001 and 2005, he called time on his playing days.
Rama also called it quits, importantly by his own choice. After fighting back to play five games in 2007, he played an incredible 18 games in 2008 to finish an inspiring career with 134 games to his name, all of them in the service of his beloved Essendon FC.
In the end I think the fact that he had repeatedly come back against the odds had finally caught up with him, taking a physical and mental toll. The game was
getting faster and faster and Rama had done what I hoped I would be able to do down the track – he went out on his own terms.
I wasn’t ready to do that just yet and was happy to put pen to paper on another one-year contract.
ADAM RAMANAUSKAS
Premiership teammate, good friend, cancer survivor
Fletch was always a really smart trainer. He knew exactly what he needed to do to get himself fit. For starters, he was always at training an hour before everyone else, calmly eating his toast and reading the newspaper in the car. He wouldn’t win you any time trials and he wasn’t too fond of riding the push bike or swimming laps in the pool either, but no-one questioned his methods.
If Fletch figured ‘training’ for him that day was just to kick the footy around, no-one worried.
He might have been a straight up-and-down trainer, but he rarely missed sessions. There are plenty of guys on the AFL journey who go, ‘I’m not feeling well so I won’t train.’ But Fletch is the opposite. Even if he was crook he’d always get through the session.
He was also meticulous in the way he prepared himself before the game and during the week – it was almost planned down to the minute. Fletch got to the game two and a half hours before the tip-off. By the time we all rolled in he was already in his kit, ankles fully strapped, having already had his massage and was sitting there casually reading the Footy Record, ready to go.
On the field his ability to cut angles was as good as I have ever seen. So many times in a game we’d find ourselves saying: ‘Shit, Fletch is out of position here, he won’t get it in time.’ But then he’d make up three or four metres in a flash by cutting an angle no-one saw but him.
I would love for there to be a stat on how many goals Fletch has saved in his career. Everyone knows when guys like Lloydy kick 900-plus goals but there are less glamorous stats just as important in AFL. A lot of defenders would love to know how many times a bloke has been 10 metres out from goal and Fletch has got an arm in and spoiled it, or how many times, when the ball was going through, Fletch has dived to the goal line to save a goal.
Fletch Page 13