Sheedy - always ahead of the game
Dan Silkstone | November 1, 2008
Sheeds is always reading: politics, history, geography and coaching. At the moment, a history of India nestles in his portmanteau. Mention of it sparks him as he runs through his plan for an Essendon-Richmond game on the subcontinent: "We could call it the Bengal Tigers versus the Bombay Bombers."
Richmond first approached him about returning soon after he left Windy Hill. Sheedy told them he needed time away and to ask him again in a year. Now, he says, he is ready to go back to the club where he made his name. It is a club that tried more than once to recruit him as coach and which has enjoyed little success since he left it three decades ago.
He goes to the club, brimming with ideas and hoping to lift membership and fortunes while resolving to stay resolutely out of football department business.
He wants to build a new corporate coterie group for young executives, the sort of thing that Collingwood and Essendon have specialised in. "Richmond could be masters in that area," he says. He wants to further promote the dreamtime game and his newest contribution to the fixture, a "Eureka Game" between Richmond and North Melbourne based around paying tribute to the working class.
He felt, he says, an obligation to go back there and now considers himself a Tiger once more. When the two clubs clash next season in the Dreamtime at the 'G match that he invented, Sheedy will be barracking for Richmond. "I left Essendon and that was their decision not mine," he says. "I am a Richmond person now."
http://www.realfooty.com.au/news/news/sheedy--always-ahead-of-the-game/2008/10/31/1224956333152.html?page=fullpage#contentSwap1
