Essendon's desperate but determined campaign to lure Kevin Sheedy back to the Bombers has been successful.
A cocktail of club and coterie money – conservatively estimated at an annual $250,000 – has been raised to install the four-time premiership coach as a community ambassador and welcome distraction from the harsh realities of everything that Essendon has become.
The move only requires the rubber stamp from Sheedy's current employer Greater Western Sydney who may seek compensation from Essendon for their inaugural coach to break his agreement with them.
The two clubs have been negotiating since the Bombers finally put a formal offer last week to the man still regarded by so many Essendon members as their spiritual leader. After all, Sheedy's deal with the Giants, where he is also a club director, runs until 2017 with exit clauses.
Interestingly, Sheedy's former champion captain James Hird has not been part of the team wooing Sheedy. Interesting too that he will become one of four former AFL coaches now at the club with Mark Harvey, Neil Craig and Mark Neeld.
If Harvey's appointment was partly an insurance against the senior coach being sacked, then Sheedy's presence too will provide symbolic solace for the masses who still regard Hird as their saviour.
The move to bring Sheedy back began in 2013 when the club was still negotiating its punishment with the AFL and at war with most of the competition. Its progression has been as shambolic as most of Essendon's strategies since David Evans resigned that dreadful football winter.
It began with approaches from various coterie groups and continued with various caveats. If Mark Thompson remained then Sheedy would do this ... should Mark Harvey come on board his old mentor could do that and so forth.
Chairman Paul Little, unable to control or influence Hird, is understood to have persuasively communicated his wish to bring Sheedy back when the two met over summer. And influential Essendonians led by Ron Kirwan have reportedly raised more than half of Sheedy's pay packet – about $150,000.
Clearly money is not Sheedy's primary motivation. He has been well paid at the Giants. He is truly devastated at Essendon's capitulation since his departure and has often communicated to friends his disbelief at the events which have taken place over the past three or four years.
His role looks set to be purely ambassadorial and promotional. Sheedy will become a fundraiser for the club, working on community programs so neglected in recent years. Once the AFL leader in the indigenous club space, Essendon lost that mantle to Port Adelaide long before Paddy Ryder defected to Alberton while the Bombers by comparison have become non-existent in that area.
The Sheedy coup – and it is a coup – has more recently run parallel with Essendon's push to appoint Ken Lay, the recently retired chief commissioner of Victoria Police, as the club's No. 1 member. The two men would head a concerted club campaign against family violence. But Lay has put a decision on hold until after the findings on the 34 past and present Essendon players.
So much at Essendon and the entire AFL competition is riding on the fate of those players. Should they be suspended Hird's position becomes untenable. He said so himself. Chief executive Xavier Campbell would struggle to survive and, either way, Little is expected to stand down by the end of this year.
It is beyond doubt that a new broom is required at Essendon. But Kevin Sheedy transcends all that. In bringing him back, the end has justified the means.
Greater Western Sydney is right to demand some control over his departure given their ongoing search for a major sponsor and the ongoing struggle for an identity – a fight publicly led by Sheedy. But that club must now search for new and more solid football foundations. Not to mention a better awareness of its unconventional market.
Not that Essendon should see Sheedy as its saviour, despite the Bombers' long-standing and more recently damaging messiah culture which can be traced back to Coleman. It seems unfortunate for all of Australian Rules football that Sheedy cannot simply work across the game as a national ambassador on a full-time wage with the AFL.
But his optimism, charm and ultimate goodness can only be a positive for the club – the club which removed him seven seasons ago in order to rebuild, and instead capitulated in a manner no football person back then would have believed.
