“I used to have a saying. When we have a big win, it was the coach’s fault. But when we had a big loss, it was the president’s fault.’” So said Greg Sewell in the 18th episode of historical podcast Fabric of the Essendon Football Club, when discussing his time as president of Essendon during the 1980s.
“I was president and I led the show, but a lot of other people worked really hard to make it what it was—the administrative people and the playing side. I had a view that how well we performed as a board had a direct relationship to how well they do it out on the field. If we’re in the board room blueing, and it gets out, the players can sometimes think [negatively]; they’ve heard stories or whatever. There’s no doubt it has a direct relationship, I won’t be convinced of anything else. If we perform badly, there’s every chance that the team will not perform anywhere near as well as it might if we were performing well. I firmly believe that.”
Sewell has spent much of his life in and around Essendon (he recently celebrated his 89th birthday) and is one of the club’s finest ever servants. His grandfather, Sid Sewell, had served on the club’s committee and was vice-president, while Greg rose through the ranks firstly with the under-19s, then with the reserves. Between 1952-61, he played 171 senior games as a wingman and half-forward, including two losing Grand Finals in 1957 and 1959. In the latter, Sewell top-scored with four goals to help the Bombers, under coach Dick Reynolds, push Norm Smith’s mighty Melbourne side until three-quarter time, before ultimately falling 37 points short. The loss was the most disappointing of his playing career.
“Always ‘what if?’ Always. It’s the only missing link of the chain. I’ve played in a premiership in the under-19s (1950), I’ve played in a premiership in the reserves (1952), I’ve coached a premiership in the reserves (1968), but I haven’t played in a [senior] premiership for Essendon. I’ve been a president [of premierships in 1984-85], but that’s the missing link. It’s very sad. I wish we had won.” Sewell could count himself a touch unlucky, as his senior career was wedged between two great eras. The Bombers won premierships in 1950, just before he made his debut, and again in 1962, the year after he retired.
After leading the reserves to the premiership in 1968, Sewell retired from coaching—in 1965, he had filled in for one game as senior coach for John Coleman, defeating Geelong to give him a 100 per cent winning record—and immediately joined the committee. At the end of 1975, following the sacking of captain-coach Des Tuddenham, Sewell, now vice-president, was involved in a clandestine mission to coax Richmond’s triple premiership player, Kevin Sheedy, away from Tigerland to become captain-coach of the Bombers.
“In 1976, Allan Hird was president and I was chairman of the match committee. Following some discussion at the board, Allan Hird and I were directed, if you like, to organise through an intermediate to have a meeting with Kevin Sheedy about leaving Richmond to come and coach us. So, when he was [later] appointed in 1980, I had no problem with that at all, because I was right behind the ’76 approach. Sheeds said [at the time], ‘I’m interested in coaching, but I want to learn a bit more. There’s a lot of things I want to do yet,’ because he knew he wanted to coach and he wanted to learn more from [Tom] Hafey and those sorts of blokes who could put him in [good] stead, ready to go.
“Not many people knew about that ’76 approach. It was down in Port Melbourne. I don’t know who arranged the room, but it was upstairs in an office—we were just given the office—but even today I don’t know who arranged the thing.” Sewell and Hird interviewed Sheedy “for quite some time,” but then, after Sheedy turned them down, the club appointed former Fitzroy player and coach, Bill Stephen, as Tuddenham’s replacement for 1976. Sewell believes that Stephen deserves more recognition for the role he played during his two seasons as coach, before he, too, was sacked and replaced by favourite son, Barry Davis, at the end of 1977.
“I liked Bill Stephen, I thought Bill did a good job. I think he set things up for some younger players. He was, to me, a great coach, Bill. He knew that certain players had to be approached this way, some that way, and he was a good teacher. A very good teacher. That’s what Bill did, he nurtured them, and I don’t think that Bill finished up getting the credit that he should have. He put a foundation in that was extremely good.”
In 1980, after four years off the committee, Sewell was coaxed back to Essendon on the urging of some former players. He became president in the December, two months after the club had signed Sheedy as coach in place of Davis. Then, early in his first season as president, Sewell was faced with a dilemma when his 33-year-old coach informed the committee that he was intent on making a comeback as a player to try and help reverse the team’s poor on-field results. The Bombers had enjoyed just one win from the first six rounds. According to Sewell, this was no gimmick. Sheedy was dead-serious about pulling on the boots.
“True. Absolutely true. He was determined that the only solution was for him to play again. He argued that for days and days—he wanted to play, but we said no. That wasn’t my decision alone, but that was the considered decision and it was the right decision. He came here to coach and not play.” With Sheedy coaching from over the fence, the Bombers stormed home late in the season, winning 15 of their final 16 games to finish fourth, before a narrow elimination final defeat to Fitzroy ended their season.
The next drama Sewell had to manage came on the night after the 1983 Grand Final. The reserves, under Kevin Morris, had won the premiership over Collingwood by 29 points, but the seniors were thrashed by Hawthorn, by a then-record margin of 83 points. Despite the senior disappointment, Sewell, like many others, felt the success of the reserves deserved to be celebrated. Sheedy felt otherwise.
“Well, that was the night of all nights after having been beaten,” Sewell said. “The reserves had won the Grand Final and I thought that was something we should celebrate, and we did. We tried to reconcile with ourselves that, well, we did lose [the seniors], it was a bad loss, but we’re big and strong enough to get on with the job. I was not the only one that was shattered when Sheeds got up and spoke at the function. And when he said something like this, ‘If I see anybody in this room with a smile on their face, I’ll tell you to get out,’ the room went silent.” Was the president pre-warned of Sheedy’s pending outburst? “Not at all.”
“I said [to everyone], I understand where Sheeds is coming from, disappointed, and this was his way to remind these blokes that it wasn’t good and we’ve gotta do better. But the other boys won their Grand Final. I did [pull him aside afterwards] and I could have talked for 24 hours, but for Sheeds that was his way of doing it. And there’s no way known, on reflection, that I was going to change him. And the wives, the parents of the reserve XVIII, what more could they do? They played and won, but they copped the same blast. They weren’t allowed to enjoy their success.”
During his seven years as president (1981-87), Sewell always tried supporting his coach throughout what was a remarkable period of success for Essendon, culminating in back-to-back premierships in 1984-85. But one decision still sits uncomfortably with him to this day. Always strong on fostering a supportive and inclusive culture at Windy Hill, Sewell’s loyalty to Sheedy partly eroded at the fabric of the very culture they had both worked so hard to develop. Essendon was one big happy family, until suddenly it wasn’t.
“The greatest mistake that I made, in my view, of being chairman, was agreeing and supporting Kevin Sheedy in a particular position. We were given a few short hours to make a decision, because of what Kevin was putting to us; that this is what we had to do if we wanted to win the premiership in this particular year. We had to get [Michael] Richardson and [Geoff] Raines from Collingwood. It meant that [Steve] Carey and Peter Bradbury would be delisted. Now, I supported that because I felt I had to support the coach. But it didn’t take me long to realise that it was the worst decision that I ever made at the footy club, because Richardson and Raines did nothing; they weren’t part of our team. And these two boys, particularly Steve Carey, was one of the greatest clubmen that we’d had. He’s back with the club now, but that could have destroyed his loyalty to the club.
“I think about it often. I was loyal to ‘Sheeds’, but he gave us not enough time to think about it—it was a deadline. We had a special meeting on the Sunday and, if we didn’t do it by 12 o’clock on the Sunday, the deal was off and he would have blamed us because we didn’t allow him to get the two players. That’s something I won’t forget. I’ve said to Steve, I’ve said to Peter at least six times: ‘I’m sorry about that.’ I say to myself, I didn’t do what I should have done. I supported the coach and I reckon I abdicated my ability of doing what I wanted to do, what I thought was best for the club.”
Sewell’s impact on Essendon, his dedication and tireless work over many years, is unquestioned. In 2009, just one year after Sheedy received the same honour, Sewell joined his former coach as a Legend in the club’s illustrious Hall of Fame.
Fabric of the Essendon Football Club is a weekly 20-episode series powered by Liberty, featuring in-depth chats between club historian Dan Eddy and 20 of the club’s most adored names across multiple decades. You can listen via Spotify, Apple Podcasts and Google Podcasts.
