What do Essendon stand for as a club? What is their culture, fanbase, what makes them unique?

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No one but Kevin Sheedy has coached Essendon to a Finals win in 54 years.
That’s not coaching to a flag…. It’s a lack of even a single win in any Final.

Since 1968, Sheedy coached for 28 years for loads of success.

In the other 26 seasons without him since 1968 - zilch.

Staggering
 
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Shane Heard said:
Sheedy wasn’t elitist. He was a back pocket plumber who came from nothing and walked in RFC asking for a game. (Prahran FC before)

He came from the Tommy Hafey / Graham Richmond school of thought which was kill or or be killed.

Everything in 70s at windy hill was a bit laid back and casual.

Sheedy put a stop to that culture and ruthlessly cut from the list anybody who wasn’t prepared to train and play like a demon.

Hard work ..supreme fitness. That’s what he wanted.
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Read it again mate

So you have a working class person, player, coach, who brought a hard edge and intensity to a footy club that was fairly elitist.
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It used to be that they'd talk up the premiership credentials every pre season despite all evidence to the contrary. But I've noticed the Essendon faithful have finally joined the rest of us in the real world now.
 
owen87 said:
Are we still pretending what a suburb was 100 years ago is relevant to what influential coterie members are like today?

Pick any club in the AFL and you'll find the influential coterie members are almost undoubtedly older, rich, and demanding success now. They think it's like the EPL or NBA where you can just buy the players in.
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It gives an insight into the original identity of the club.

Essendon have been a well-funded club. That's where their success has historically come from in the semi-professional era. Similar to Melbourne, they won about 12 premierships in the first 70 years, and only 4 in the last 60 years. Apart from GC, I think they are the club with longest finals winning drought, and have the longest term since making a GF (2001). Under constraints introduced in the 70s and now the salary cap of the professional era, they have largely struggled.

Although Sheedy was an Essendon 'fan', he wasn't an Essendon person - not when you compare what Essendon represented historically as a club. Essendon became everything that Sheedy represented. But that wasn't the club. It can be seen from the struggles since he stopped coaching at the joint that there is an identity vacuum there.
 
mcgarnacle said:
It gives an insight into the original identity of the club.

Essendon have been a well-funded club. That's where their success has historically come from in the semi-professional era. Similar to Melbourne, they won about 12 premierships in the first 70 years, and only 4 in the last 60 years. Apart from GC, I think they are the club with longest finals winning drought, and have the longest term since making a GF (2001). Under constraints introduced in the 70s and now the salary cap of the professional era, they have largely struggled.

Although Sheedy was an Essendon 'fan', he wasn't an Essendon person - not when you compare what Essendon represented historically as a club. Essendon became everything that Sheedy represented. But that wasn't the club. It can be seen from the struggles since he stopped coaching at the joint that there is an identity vacuum there.
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A number of the traditional big clubs struggled to make that transition, Carlton and Essendon exemplify that. Two clubs used to being able to leverage their size and wealth to get the best players in fell behind as a level of equality due to salary cap and drafting constraints came in.

Essendon also shot itself in the foot multiple times trying to take short-cuts (as has Carlton). The two are quite similar really, traditional powerhouse clubs that have taken a very long time to come to the realisation that the old methods won't work, and fighting with a cohort of influential and wealthy (older) coterie members who don't accept that those old methods don't work.

Knights was the wrong hire post-Sheedy, but he was also woefully under resourced at a time when you had Sydney, Geelong and Hawthorn plowing money in to their football department. They turfed him for Hird and spent big on the football department, which was partly the right move, but ended up down the path that destroyed the club for the best part of a decade. Now they're scratching around trying to enter the modern era with a series of internal stoushes that has seen Worsfold extended-not-extended-coaching-handover, Rutten not really given the time or support necessary, and now Scott as an experienced campaigner (in both the actual and swear filter usage) with a far better resourced football department.

How a club that has one of the best training facilities of any sports club in the country only employed 2.5 full time assistant coaches is beyond me, and I imagine any AFL fan with a minimal level of experience in sport could have told you that is an area they should be investing heavily in. Essendon has one of the higher membership figures in the AFL despite being pretty poor on-field for over a decade now, a great book of sponsors, and plenty of cash. We should be paying the luxury tax every single year for a jam packed coaching and development department because we can. Because big clubs can still afford things smaller clubs can't.

Spend the money on football, and good football will come. It's not complicated.
 
buzzbuzz said:
As far as I can tell based on this thread, the only thing that unites or defines Essendon is all their supporters are defensive dickheads.
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By the majority of Essendon fans in this thread who are basically ripping their club apart ? Are you sure you have read it or just seen the thread title and gone whack ?
 
Shane Heard said:
Sheedy put a stop to that culture and ruthlessly cut from the list anybody who wasn’t prepared to train and play like a demon.

Hard work ..supreme fitness. That’s what he wanted.
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Train like a demon?

This is news to Paul van der Haar
 

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hilly said:
He may well but the revisionism about his time at North is incredible.
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Looking back with hindsight of the years following his departure, you don't think he did well to get that list to a couple of prelims, and that they shouldn't have (I believe anyway) followed his suggestion of a rebuild sooner rather than later?

I don't think his last couple of seasons were anything to write home about, but we've now seen two coaches following Scott manage to get results as bad or worse, so it shows the list really hasn't been there to do much more.

I think the list(s) he took to a Prelim in 2014 & 2015 were pretty much maxed out at that point, had some good players but not stacked with stars, and I don't see any other coach getting them any further personally.
 
footyfan1978 said:
Yeah, and we will hit number 23 whilst they still will have no flag despite giving them all this time whilst we be in the worst period of our club's history to make some headway on us.
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23????
Oh, you're one of those.
I cop this idiotic argument from Cats fans too.
VFL/AFL premierships commenced in 1897. The end.
Prior, VFA flags are irrelevant. Sorry to burst your bubble, you must have been very proud of all those 1870s flags, probably awarded by committee with no finals series :clapping::clapping::clapping:
 
DaddyMac80 said:
23????
Oh, you're one of those.
I cop this idiotic argument from Cats fans too.
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ha ha. You sucker..
Knew would reel a sucker in with that.
Whatever your argument with Kitty fans I do not care.
We won 22 premierships.
Been in my signature on my posts for quite some time now.
16 premierships in this league and another 6 before we all moved over to this league except for well, some of you stragglers that were fit enough to join later. The end ;)
 
TerryWallet said:
Head of Football Josh Mahoney has just been officially castrated by EFC.

Sidelined to irrelevance.

His sin?.......clashing with Adrian Dodoro lol.

The unholy alliance of Kevin Sheedy, Adrian Dodoro and Mark Casey have zero intention of stopping hurting Essendon FC supporters.

When will it end?
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Never. Adrian "Damien" Dodoro is an unstoppable political demon who has utterly possessed it's host body and there's no exorcism powerful enough to stop it
 
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Lance Uppercut said:
Never. Adrian "Damien" Dodoro is an unstoppable political demon who has utterly possessed it's host body and there's no exorcism powerful enough to stop it
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lol. nice analogy.

But seriously, and yes it is serious that Damien has such a grip on EFC......but seriously, what possessed the sane portion of EFC....and yes we both know that is only a small sliver these days.....but what possessed them to name Kevin Sheedy the Club's only immortal WHILE he is on the Board, and in the batshit crazy state of mind he is in?

Surely sanity suggests that you would dump the old lunatic from the Club first....and THEN raise the immortal coach that he was to a pedestal while he rests leisurely at home.

But now he is the newly crowned only Club Immortal and is clearly unsackable and is emboldened.

To get rid of Damien, you have to get rid of Sheedy and Casey first.
 
TerryWallet said:
lol. nice analogy.

But seriously, and yes it is serious that Damien has such a grip on EFC......but seriously, what possessed the sane portion of EFC....and yes we both know that is only a small sliver these days.....but what possessed them to name Kevin Sheedy the Club's only immortal WHILE he is on the Board, and in the batshit crazy state of mind he is in?

Surely sanity suggests that you would dump the old lunatic from the Club first....and THEN raise the immortal coach that he was to a pedestal while he rests leisurely at home.

But now he is the newly crowned only Club Immortal and is clearly unsackable and is emboldened.

To get rid of Damien, you have to get rid of Sheedy and Casey first.
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I wish I could answer that but of course I can't. I mean, it's insane he's even on the board in the first place, but it is very Essendon
 
Lance Uppercut said:
I wish I could answer that but of course I can't. I mean, it's insane he's even on the board in the first place, but it is very Essendon
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And that is the sane reply i anticipated lol. I was literally gonna add a last line to the previous post that i don't expect an answer because there is no answer. And it is more sane for an EFC supporter to just sit and wait now than to scramble for answers.
 
footyfan1978 said:
Yeah, and we will hit number 23 whilst they still will have no flag despite giving them all this time whilst we be in the worst period of our club's history to make some headway on us.
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Might want to have less decade long droughts when it comes to making the finals.

Surely this year....
 
Clubs stand for nothing. Absolutely useless footballing idiom.

Id say we are the most unique club in the competition. Everyone else are just businesses with interchangable pieces.

We are a cult.
 
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