EVEN as a player, Kevin Sheedy changed the game.
The rocket handball, where the ball spins backwards off the fist, was a Sheedy invention. He pioneered it because it was more accurate.
Only great players leave that sort of stamp on the game.
Keeping possession, critical to the game now, was important to Sheedy when he first played 46 long years ago, in 1967.
He understood how vital chains of possession were to scoring.
Those who played in his era remember a player who wasted few kicks.
His premiership teammate Michael Green said that, in today’s language, Sheedy’s kicking efficiency would be rated at about 80 per cent.
“I’ve got no doubt that, in today’s footy, Sheedy would be an outstanding user of the ball because he was never a long kick, but he made himself into an extremely efficient medium length kick,” Green said.
That was different to most who played in his era.
Many Sheedy contemporaries thought their job when they got the footy was to roost it as far as they could.
But Sheedy thought there was more to the game than that, and worked hard to become proficient in an area of the game that was to that point undervalued.
Gareth Andrews crossed to Richmond from Geelong in 1974 and saw the work Sheedy put in to get better.
“He was a perfectionist,” Andrews said. “By devoting himself to football, he turned himself into a very good footballer.”
He had the last kick of the 1973 Grand Final. It’s on YouTube. Watch his positioning, balance, pick-up, physique and kick and you can’t help thinking of Fremantle’s Nathan Fyfe.
Sheedy started in the back pocket and played in the 1969 premiership in his 45th game. By 1973, he was in the middle and across half-forward.
By the end of 1974, he had played in his third premiership.
He carried the No. 10 on his back to all parts of the ground and became a goalkicking midfielder/high half-forward during the back-to-back flag years.
He kicked 59 per cent of his career goals in two of his 13 seasons.
Five of the 54 goals he kicked in those two seasons – 1973 and 1974 – came in that year’s Grand Finals, his three first-quarter goals in the 1973 Grand Final setting up Richmond’s win over Carlton.
With three premierships behind him and three best and fairest placings to his name, he won his only best and fairest in 1976, at the age of 28.
Sheedy was also a regular Victorian representative in an era when two players were chosen from each club.
Like a cheeky kid who always avoids trouble, he was reported just once in his 251 games, for striking Carlton’s Adrian Gallagher in 1968, in just his 15th game.
He was found not guilty. It is a nice antidote to the popular perception of the tough back pocket plumber.
Green, the recipient of a cute handball from Sheedy that led to a goal in the 1974 Grand Final, used the word alert when describing him as a player.
He was indicating that Sheedy never went through the motions.
Rather, he thought his way through each contest, a crafty operator in the business of football.
“I remember twice in games Sheedy making eye contact with me from 50 metres away to indicate where he wanted me to run and what he wanted me to do, and then I did it and the ball landed in my hands,” Green said.
