Fletch Read online

  We started well, kicking four goals to one in the first quarter, and then stretched the lead to more than five goals at half-time. Once again our youngsters were standing up, with Misiti in everything in the middle of the ground and Mercuri and Calthorpe sharing five goals between them. Salmon booted four crucial majors, while at the other end Peter Sumich managed three. We were rarely threatened in the second half and won by 32 points going away.

  The build-up to the preliminary final against Adelaide centred around one man for me: Tony Modra. Modra had emerged as the game’s premier full-forward, with a seemingly unquenchable penchant for taking hangers. Those spectacular leaping marks had been the feature of his brilliant season, which had so far netted him 123 goals at the stupendous average of over five per game.

  Keeping this juggernaut from steamrolling over me and stomping my head in on the way was enough of a concern for a young man in his first final. But of equal alarm were Modra’s amazing recovery efforts when the ball was on the ground. He not only slotted them long and high when he was in range, but also snuck plenty of opportunistic goals by soccering them home off the ground.

  Modra was assisted in this brilliance by a highly skilled midfield who kicked the ball astutely to him at every opportunity. And that’s exactly what happened in the opening half of the preliminary final.

  Straight out of the blocks, the Crows were all over us. They kicked seven goals in the first quarter and at halftime their lead was out to 42 points. As we trudged into the rooms, Harvs was waiting for us. He was out injured but would be right for next week if we made it – which the halftime scoreboard said wasn’t looking like the case.

  Harvs never took a backward step on the field and he didn’t leave anything unsaid in his spray, which left us in no doubt about exactly what he thought of our insipid first-half efforts. The coach, by contrast, was surprisingly calm. Sheedy’s quirky and somewhat bizarre pre-game calls-to-arms were a feature of his coaching, and he pulled another unpredictable analogy from left field for his halftime address to us on this occasion. Instead of talking footy and tactics, he spoke to us about the outnumbered Vietcong gamely resisting the US forces during the Vietnam War. To be honest, the point of the story went completely over the heads of most of us, yet the calm of his delivery eased the anxiety in the room. Rather than rant and rave and make wholesale changes to the team, Sheeds backed us to a man. So it was that the guys flogged by 40-plus in the first half all started the third quarter in the exact same positions as at the start of the game.

  We ran back on with the rousing pleas of our senior players also ringing in our ears. Long, O’Donnell and Bewick were all yet to taste premiership success and spoke passionately about wanting to avenge Essendon’s disappointing loss to Collingwood in the 1990 Grand Final, where, after a strong start, the Bombers had been beaten by 48 points.

  It struck a chord, and we were a different unit in the third quarter. Long was brilliant and Bewick was popping up everywhere on his way to a six-goal haul. Six goals to one brought the margin back to 12 points at the final break, and while Modra had kicked six up to that point he was now being starved of opportunities.

  Our roll-on continued in the final quarter as we kicked three goals in a row. A major from O’Donnell, who’d been great all day with 26 possessions, put us in front for the first time midway through the final term. Fittingly, it was the old stager Timmy Watson who sealed the deal with a brilliant snap in the dying moments to claim a famous victory by 11 points.

  It took a few seconds for the reality to sink in once the siren sounded. I was going to be playing in an AFL Grand Final! I was still at school, had just turned 18 and had only played 16 games. Yet in seven days time I would be running out on to the MCG against Carlton on the final Saturday in September.

  It was crazy, but for some reason I didn’t find this date with destiny in any way daunting. As a football team we had just showed, with that comeback, that we were capable of doing anything.

  *

  It would be fair to say my preparation for the upcoming Year 12 exams didn’t get my full attention as I counted down the hours to the biggest moment of my life so far: Grand Final Day 1993.

  Everyone at school was understandably pretty excited for me and the club as a whole. Again, it was good to be in that calm, structured environment: it helped keep my mind off Stephen Kernahan. Sheeds had let me know early that I would be playing on the Carlton skipper in the big one. It would be my first time up against the Blues champion – in my debut game I’d played in the ruck and then in the Round 17 match-up where I played fullback, Kernahan had been out injured.

  What the tapes, my teammates and my own eyes told me was that Kernahan was a game-changing player who attracted the ball by sheer force of will. Recognising this, his Blues teammates were only to kick it to him, which meant I was certainly going to be in the thick of the action on game day.

  Grand Final week started on a good note, with my little mate in the back pocket, Gavin Wanganeen, winning the 1993 Brownlow Medal. I was very fortunate to have Gavin next to me in my early career. He was a brilliant mark for his size and never made a mistake, always cleaning up on the last line to save our skin over and over again. He’d come over from Port Adelaide in 1991 and lived with the club’s reverend for the first six months. Gavin was a softly spoken bloke and, perhaps at the behest of the church, maintained a reputation as a non-drinker in his early days with the club. That changed later in his career, and as the years went on we often found ourselves enjoying a drink, a joke and a laugh together.

  While ‘Wangas’ was enjoying Grand Final week, the same couldn’t be said for his fellow Indigenous star Derek Kickett. Despite playing every home and away game, he was dropped on the Thursday night in favour of Wallis. David Flood was the other unlucky omission from the line-up, replaced by Harvey.

  The Kickett selection drama was the talk of the town on Friday as we all headed into the city for the traditional Grand Final Parade. I’d managed to keep my nerves under control, but that all changed when I found myself being driven through the streets of Melbourne with thousands of people screaming my name.

  It was overwhelming. I couldn’t get it out of my head that I’d only been supposed to play school footy and a few reserves games this year, yet here I was about to play in an AFL Grand Final. The funny thing was I could sense that people were nervous for me because I was so young.

  I managed to get my usual decent amount of sleep on Grand Final eve and took my time to get organised. Dad had offered a bit of advice through the week given he’d been in this situation before. Ironically, his only appearance in a Grand Final had also been against Carlton, in 1968. Unfortunately the result wasn’t what he wanted, with the Bombers leading all day but eventually coming up short in the final quarter to go down by three points.

  Our warm-up was as normal as possible and Sheeds once again had an interesting pre-game address prepared. This time he showed the team a video of Duncan Armstrong’s 200-metrefreestyle win at the 1988 Olympics. The unfancied Australian swimmer had come from 46th in the world to defeat three world champions, win the gold medal and set a world record. Sheeds’ point was that we too had come from the clouds and now were two short hours away from our own piece of gold.

  He didn’t have much more for his youngest charge that day. As I prepared to run out, the game’s great orator simply said, ‘Good luck.’

  In my dreams and in idle hours at school or between friendly kicks, I’d often tried to imagine what the moment of running out on to the ground for a Grand Final would be like. It was nothing like the reality.

  Because I’d been downstairs under the stand for the past two hours I’d almost forgotten that there were nearly 100,000 people at the ground. There was no forgetting that now. The roar as we ran out was deafening, and I turned around to take in the enormity of the moment. I caught Misiti doing the same and we smiled at each other. This was the big stage.

  Kernahan didn’t say anything as I ran up to h
im and took my position. My heart was pounding and I was very appreciative when the ball went in the opposite direction to me from the opening bounce.

  Getting an early touch or a good spoil in the case of a fullback is the best way to settle the nerves. Thankfully I got the latter when Carlton’s first foray forward went to Kernahan and I had the perfect sit on him, managing to punch the ball 20 metres away to the boundary line.

  We were looking good early and Salmon got our first goal courtesy of a free kick against Silvagni. I got involved in our second goal a couple of minutes later. Carlton had scored a point and I took the kick-in, sending a long bomb 55 metres to the centre of the ground, where Denham ran on to the crumbs.

  Leg speed had been one of the cornerstones of Essendon’s success throughout the year, with the likes of Longy, Olarenshaw, Calthorpe and Mercuri the line-breakers. What happened next will always live large in the memory of those who saw it. Denham handballed wide to Michael Long, who took off. He bounced once, twice, three times as he flew down the wing. As Longy closed in on the forward line, he danced around a Carlton opponent and then took one more bounce before drilling the goal from 30 metres out. It was breathtaking, possibly the goal of the year. More importantly, it showed Carlton we were on.

  Kernahan got the Blues’ first and only goal for the opening term from a snap, but by the time the siren blew to signal the end of the opening break, we were already five goals up. Longy got the first goal of the second quarter and then a couple of minutes later Wally showed why he’d been controversially brought into the team in place of Kickett. Sheeds had made the personnel switch because he wanted Wally’s physical presence to be a factor. Now the big fella delivered, running through Carlton’s Mil Hanna and then shortly afterwards capitalising on a Carlton error on the last line to kick a crucial goal. By half-time we had extended our lead to 37.

  But there was a problem: Kernahan was hotting up.

  All year Sheeds had refused to berate me for having goals kicked on me by gun forwards. I appreciated that. As coach he knew it was often a mismatch and so did I, but what mattered more to him and the team was that as long as I continued to make a contest at fullback, it released other teammates to have an impact elsewhere. ‘Keep at it and we’re happy,’ were always Sheeds’ calming words.

  Momentum stayed with us in the third term. Longy was everywhere, the ‘Big Fish’ kicked his third goal and Kernahan kept us – and the scorers – busy. The Blues staged a mini-comeback late in the quarter with two consecutive goals before Calthorpe produced some brilliance, roving the centre bounce and then running to 55 metres for a long goal. Then, in the dying seconds before three-quarter time, Misiti produced a gem from 45 metres out on the boundary line to extend our lead to 42.

  Despite the scoreline showing the flag as ours to lose, I refused to relax and really didn’t take my first breath until Sheeds decided to move me off Kernahan for a bit of respite. The Carlton captain had dominated me, kicking seven goals. But while my personal pride may have been dented I wasn’t overly fussed, because the scoreboard told me Essendon was dominating.

  Fittingly, it was another stirring dash from Longy – who would be a popular winner of the Norm Smith Medal – that set up the final goal of the game, to Wanganeen. Thirty seconds later the siren sounded and a wave of relief washed over me as the scoreboard stopped ticking over, with the ledger showing Essendon 20.13 (133) to Carlton 13.11 (89).

  I was a premiership player.

  I ran over and hugged Wally and we collapsed to the ground as other teammates jumped on top. It was pure magic. The next half an hour was a blur. For years I’d watched on TV as the players received their medals on the dais and then carried on with the premiership cup. Now I was doing it. Crazy!

  The celebrations were wild and long. From the rooms at the MCG we went over to the Hilton Hotel for a club dinner where the players’ wives and girlfriends joined us. I didn’t have either, so I took Damion as my date. I even made it on to the biggest TV show of the time, Hey Hey It’s Saturday, which did a live cross to the event.

  Eventually we made it back to Windy Hill, and I couldn’t believe the size of the crowd that had gathered. The place was pumping and I got a few of my schoolmates into the social club where we enjoyed a few beers until about 2 am before heading back into the city for some nightclub partying. The Tunnel got a work-out, followed by a couple of other King Street establishments. It was a massive night and I was certainly feeling a bit worse for wear when we gathered again on the Sunday afternoon at a Flemington pub. Compared to my more experienced teammates I wasn’t battle-hardened in the drinking stakes, but I just loved being there. For me this was the reason you played footy – to sit around with your mates, talk about the game and have a few beers.

  The ‘Baby Bombers’ continued to celebrate with gusto over the next few days, but unfortunately I had to excuse myself early. I had a pretty good reason: I had to go to school.

  Even though I knew it was an uphill battle, I went through the exercise of asking my parents if I could go on the footy trip with my premiership teammates but Year 12 exams were imminent and the response was as expected – no.

  Hitting the books again was tough given it wasn’t exactly my favourite thing before now anyway. I found a way to get through with a pass, which was something, and the club were sympathetic to my situation. They shouted me a trip to Queensland once school was finished with a few of my mates to celebrate the two biggest milestones of my life so far – an AFL premiership and the end of my school career.

  KEVIN SHEEDY

  AFL great and longest-serving coach in Essendon history

  Having Ken Fletcher as a father and Ken being a PE teacher, Dustin was always going to be introduced to lots of different sports. From a very young age he had unbelievable reflexes. I remember seeing them when he was four or five, because Dustin was always there at the club having a kick.

  That great hand–eye coordination probably came from Ken. But Dustin’s height came from his mum and it was Rosemary I always rang when I wanted to chat about the young Fletcher.

  See, Ken would have given me a lecture, but with Rosemary I could ask how Dustin was holding up, how he was coping with the pressure of my putting him into the Essendon side as a schoolboy. Mothers know their kids better than fathers, more often than not, and that’s why I always went to Rosemary about Dustin in those days. She would let me know if he was feeling rattled or unsure.

  Remember, back then we were talking about a 17-year-old kid. Yes, Dustin had brilliant reflexes and sensational closing speed and he could cut angles really well, but he was in many ways still a boy so I knew the most important thing for Dustin and his parents was that I was very caring as coach.

  In his first game of that ’93 season, I put Dustin in the ruck to see if he had the character to run. The ruck is a very courageous position, particularly if you are a 17-year-old. The more we kept looking at Dustin in the pre-season the more we wanted to see. It was the post-Simon Madden period and we were trying to find a couple of things so it was a ripper opportunity to have a look at the kid.

  Dustin is not a ‘stresser’ and you don’t over-coach those guys. You give them the support they need. In ’93 Dustin was surrounded by some good players like Mark Thompson, David Grenvold and Mark Harvey who could look after him, but the key to his success as fullback was that he was unflappable. Go back through the history of all the clubs and you’ll see the players Fletch stood in that first year were the best full-forwards of all time – Modra, Sumich, Lynch, Lockett, Ablett, Dunstall, Merrett.

  Dustin Fletcher copped the toughest Year 12 I have ever known and still got his exam results! To have played in a premiership while still at school is an outstanding achievement in any way, shape or form. It’s like a 17-year-old playing for the New York Giants in America or Premier League football in Europe – it’s as good as it gets in top-level sport throughout the world.

  We were able to do that with Dustin Fletcher in 1993.


  It says a lot for him that we left him on Stephen Kernahan in the Grand Final for virtually the whole match. We’d figured that if we could shut all the others down and leave Kernahan sitting there with six or seven goals then we could still win the game, and we did.

  In that game and in all those to come I could always rely on Dustin. I’d say, ‘Okay, you’re going to play on Lockett but we’ll give you support. We will throw in Wallis and we will play a loose man back.’ Fletch never blinked. That’s why he’s a great. Physically he was capable and mentally he was tough.

  CHAPTER 5

  STANDING THE MONSTERS

  ‘Okay, Dustin. You’ve had Dunstall, Modra and now Kernahan in three games. Next week it’s Ablett. You got that in your head?’

  Kevin Sheedy’s question was met with an outbreak of laughter from teammates and staff in the meeting room. The boys were wetting themselves at what had become a constant joke: the fact that on a weekly basis I faced some of the greatest full-forwards in AFL history.

  Only 10 minutes earlier I’d gained revenge on Stephen Kernahan, keeping the Blues skipper to just two goals and five behinds in the thrilling Round 9 Grand Final rematch at Waverley Park, which we won by one point. In typical Sheedy fashion he was already looking ahead to next week with his post-match address, which was why he was talking about the Cats superstar.

  ‘Ah, well, that’s the job,’ I mumbled, which brought more laughter.

  Gary Ablett was at the peak of his powers in 1994. In Round 8 he’d kicked 14 goals against St Kilda and followed it up the next weekend with eight against Richmond. The man was on fire. At half-time of our Round 10 match-up he already had six goals, but I felt I’d played almost the perfect game on him. The problem was that he was almost unstoppable in his current mindset.