Sheeds Blocked the Exit and Honestly, Fair Enough

There are two certainties in life if you barrack for the Essendon Football Club: the tribunal will know your name, and Kevin Sheedy will never, ever let you leave early. On Sunday at Marvel Stadium, Sheeds made good on the second one in the most gloriously literal way possible, planting himself in the aisle and waving supporters back to their seats like a man conducting a very frustrated orchestra.

And you know what? Good. Somebody had to do it.

The Great Australian Footy Shame

Look, we need to have a frank conversation about the early-exit epidemic, because it has gotten completely out of hand. I’m not talking about the old fella with the dodgy hip who needs to beat the tram queue. I’m talking about the healthy, able-bodied punter who starts inching toward the concourse with eight minutes left in the third quarter because the Bombers are down by three goals and they’ve apparently already written it off.

I have done it. I am not proud. I once left a game against Collingwood with six minutes to go — in the last quarter — convinced it was all over, only to learn on the train home that we’d kicked four goals in a row and won by eleven points. That was a personal low. I ate a cold meat pie in shame on the Craigieburn line and deserved every moment of it.

The thing is, footy crowds are the lifeblood of the contest. Players know when the stadium is emptying. The noise drops, the energy shifts, and suddenly the opposition midfield brigade gets a second wind. It matters. It genuinely matters. And Sheeds — who has forgotten more about football than most of us will ever know — understands that better than anyone.

A Man Who Has Earned the Right

Let’s be clear about the authority Kevin Sheedy carries when he tells you to sit back down. This is a man who coached Essendon to four premierships. Four. He won games he had absolutely no right winning, conjured comebacks that defied physics, and built a football club into a dynasty through sheer force of will and an almost supernatural belief that the game was never over.

If Kevin Sheedy tells you the game isn’t done, you listen. You don’t argue with the bloke. You don’t try to squeeze past him muttering something about the traffic on the Tullamarine. You plant yourself back in your seat, you clap your hands, and you make some noise. Those are the rules now. Sheeds has spoken.

There’s something almost poetic about a man in his seventies having more faith in the Essendon Football Club than the supporters who are actively watching the game. Though I suppose, as an Essendon supporter myself, I understand the psychological damage that leads to premature evacuation. We have been through some things. The tribunals alone have aged us all considerably.

The Bombers Faithful Have Earned Their Paranoia

Here’s where I’ll extend a little compassion to my fellow red-and-black sufferers, because context is everything. Essendon supporters have not had a straightforward relationship with hope over the past decade or so. We have been burned. Repeatedly. In spectacular, headline-generating, saga-spawning ways that have made us an accidental case study in institutional resilience.

I’ve become something of an unintentional expert on the AFL’s Match Review Officer and the Tribunal purely through osmosis — when your club tests the system as often as ours has, you start to understand the terminology whether you like it or not. So when I say Bombers fans have developed a finely-tuned instinct for self-protection, I mean it with genuine empathy.

Leaving early isn’t just laziness. Sometimes it’s armour. If you’re not there when it falls apart, it doesn’t hurt quite as much. That’s the logic, anyway. It is completley flawed logic — you still check your phone on the tram — but it’s the logic we’ve been running on.

Sheeds, bless him, refuses to accept that logic. And maybe he’s right to refuse it.

What He Was Actually Saying

When Sheedy stood in that aisle on Sunday, he wasn’t just trying to stop people beating the queues. He was sending a message about what it means to support a football club. It means you’re there. You’re present. You don’t clock off when things get uncomfortable, because showing up only when it’s easy isn’t really showing up at all.

There’s a reason the great man has that legendary status at Windy Hill — well, Essendon, Tullamarine, wherever we’re calling home these days. He built something on the idea that belief is a choice you make before you know the outcome, not after. That’s what four flags look like from the inside.

For those of us who’ve spent the better part of recent years explaining to non-Bomber friends why we’re still invested, that message hits differently. We’re still here. That is the commitment. Sheeds standing in the aisle is basically the physical manifestation of every Essendon supporter’s internal monologue circa 2013 through 2019.

Marvel Stadium Deserves Better Anyway

Can we also take a moment to acknowledge that Marvel Stadium is a genuinely good venue to watch football when it’s actually rocking? The roof, the atmosphere, the way the noise bounces around when a crowd decides to get into it — it can be spectacular. But it requires the people to stay in their seats and contribute to said atmosphere.

A half-empty stadium in the final quarter of a close game is a sad sight. It communicates to everyone watching — the players, the interstate viewers, the kids in the outer seeing their first live game — that the fans don’t believe. And if the fans don’t believe, why should anyone else?

Sheeds blocking that exit was essentially a one-man campaign for better football culture. Someone should give him a lanyard and an official role. Head of Cultural Enforcement. Make it happen, Essendon.

The Verdict From This Particular Long-Suffering Bomber

I’ll wrap this up simply: Kevin Sheedy was right. Completely, unambiguously, legendarily right. Stay in your seats, Bomber fans. Make the noise. Let the boys hear you.

We have sung the theme song through circumstances that would have finished lesser clubs. We have renewed memberships during periods when renewing a membership required genuine courage and a sense of dark humour. We have explained the supplement saga to workplace colleagues until we could do it in our sleep, and we have — slowly, painfully, hopefully — started to believe again in what this football club can become.

Leaving eight minutes early is no way to honour that history. And if Kevin Sheedy has to stand in the aisle every week from now until September to remind us of that, then honestly, I’m here for it. Bloke’s a national treasure and he’s not wrong.

Stay in your seats, you lot. The game isn’t over until it’s over. Sheeds said so.