The Kevins have Tigers' board by the tail
Jake Niall | July 3, 2009
KEVIN Sheedy and Richmond are high-school sweethearts who never managed to get the timing right as adults.
When Richmond wanted him, he was happily ensconced with a more attractive partner — Essendon. The old yellow and black flame tried to get him back at least twice but, on each occasion, he preferred the stability of his prosperous long-term relationship with the steady Dons to jumping into bed with the tempestuous Tigers.
Now, the dynamics have reversed. Sheeds wants Richmond more than the Tigers want him. But because Kevin is an old flame, for whom the club retains some affection (and a marketing role), the club must pay him the respect of listening to his pitch and giving it due consideration.
The marketing role was a way of saying, "let's just be friends". The club also invited him to be part of the panel that determines the next coach — an invitation Sheedy declined, for reasons that are now obvious. He cannot appoint himself.
Richmond president Gary March has been on record saying that the Tigers would not be interested in hiring Sheedy as a coach; so unless he and the board change its view, or there is an upheaval at board level — a turn of events that can never be discounted at Tigerland — Kevin's chances would appear slim.
Sheedy's only hope lies in his run for the job triggering political instability — a classic Peter Costello situation. In this scenario, the Richmond board, fearful of the clout past players such as Sheedy wield in the Richmond electorate, appoints Sheeds to avoid a palace coup.
One would assume Sheedy would be aware of the potential political fall-out when he put his hand up for the job. He certainly knows the weight he carries with the Tiger faithful. A matter of months ago, he mobilised the masses, via the media, on behalf of Ben Cousins and made Tiger fans more amenable to recruiting the fallen champion.
This time, the "Kevin 2010" campaign has been launched by Sheedy's teammate Kevin Bartlett, whose stature at Tigerland is greatly amplified by his daily morning show on SEN. Bartlett had previously agitated on behalf of another teammate, Michael Malthouse, when Malthouse was on less solid ground at Collingwood.
Given the potential for talk-back hysteria similar to that which finally persuaded the Tigers to punt on Cousins, the Richmond hierarchy has no choice but to take the two Kevins seriously, and to allow Sheedy a fair crack at the position.
The two Kevins have lobbed a grenade into the Tiger boardroom, and it's now up to football operations manager Craig Cameron to find a way to defuse it. The club has about eight weeks in which to avoid detonation.
Sheedy's only feasible pitch will be that he coaches along David Parkin-Wayne Brittain lines, with a younger and more-modern understudy underneath him (eg, Wayne Campbell); that he soaks up the media and supporter heat, deals with the board and allows his understudy to do much of the actual coaching, as Brittain did under Parkin in 2000.
The countervailing force to the two Kevins is the football industry-wide trend in favour of younger coaches, and the recent successes of Ross Lyon and Matthew Knights in particular. That Knights is faring well with Essendon post-Sheedy does not help the Kevins' cause.
Knights and Lyon were hired after the kind of laborious processes that Richmond is intent on undertaking. Neither was an obvious or safe choice. They emerged as a result of casting the net wide, reviewing candidates over and over, narrowing the field and then making the final choice.
Richmond, traditionally, doesn't use process to find a coach. It just picks one. The current regime is determined to be rigorous, thorough and genuinely open-minded this time.
Sheedy is unlikely to fare as well in this kind of lab rat run-off. But he deserves a chance to be part of the rat race. The club owes him that, and no more.
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