At each home game this season, Essendon will celebrate a Comeback Hero – a former champion who overcame adversity to deliver many happy moments for the Essendon faithful. In round 12 Our Comeback Hero is Matthew Lloyd.

In less than a decade he’d become Essendon’s greatest goal kicker of all time, but that seemed like an impossible dream as Matthew Lloyd sat slumped in the Bombers change rooms after a reserves game in 1995.

Lloyd had just had eight goals kicked on him in the curtain raiser. Senior Coach Kevin Sheedy had insisted the 17 year old develop his game in the backline. Sheedy liked players who play at each end of the ground.

But others thought it was doing more harm than good.

“I remember being just slumped after the game and close to tears,” Lloyd said.

“I’ll never forget overhearing Noel Judkins, the man who recruited me, saying [to Kevin Sheedy] ‘you’re killing the kid’s confidence’. But 'Sheeds' was big on Chris Grant and those types of players who could float from one end to the other.

“Within a few weeks I was back in the forward line.”

Lloyd kicked four goals against Sydney in another curtain raiser a few weeks later. The fact the senior side went on to lose their match against the Swans strengthened Lloyd’s case for a call-up.

When the cameras followed Lloyd’s every move that week in anticipation of the first year player earning a spot in the side, Lloyd couldn’t help but sense his moment had arrived.

Sure enough he was named in the side on Thursday night and on the 8^th of July 1995 in round 14 against Adelaide, Lloyd made his debut.

There were 40,269 fans in attendance at the MCG that day and they didn’t have to wait long to see what all the hype was about.

“I played on Tyson Edwards in his third game and I remember just kicking a goal in the first 10 or 20 seconds of the match,” Lloyd said.

“The forward line that day was Salmon, Hird, Wanganeen, Long, Mercuri and myself … so I had to be pinched to believe I was actually playing with those quality players.”

Football had been part of Lloyd’s life for as long as he could remember. His Dad played 29 games for Carlton. His older brothers, Simon and Brad, were VFL stars with Brad going on to play with 11 games with Hawthorn.

“It was a great household to grow up in. I played for the Avondale Heights Football Club, they wore the Big V jumpers,” Lloyd said.

“I was the youngest of the three brothers so I was always going up against people older than me and challenging them in the backyard … I think that toughened me up a fair bit.

“Football was the conversation … it was everything.”

Despite his father’s time at the Blues, Lloyd grew up barracking for Fitzroy. A bag of nine goals from Bernie Quinlan was enough to win him over. Quinlan, Doug Barwick, Mick Conlon, Richard Osborne and Alastair Lynch were among Lloyd’s early heroes.

“I’ll never forget playing for Essendon in the early years and Alistair Lynch was my opponent … I was still in awe of him from my Fitzroy days, it happened pretty quick where I was playing on some of the guys I grew up idolising,” Lloyd said.

Lloyd’s path to the Bombers was complicated. Fremantle was about to enter the competition and clubs who lost uncontracted players to the new franchise were compensated in the form of access to the nation’s best 16-year-old talent.

Lloyd was widely regarded as the best young prospect in the land and some maneuvering by the Bombers ensured they’d have first pick of the teenage talent. They also picked up Scott Lucas in the same compensation draft.

“It was very daunting walking into Essendon,” Lloyd said.

“It wasn’t like it is now where the lists are 44, there was 52 players on the list and ten supplementary list players.

“I walked in at 78kg and 16 years of age and I could sense some players with Scott Lucas and myself thought ‘who do these two young bucks think they are, maybe they’re trying to take our position in the team’.

“So it wasn’t easy … there were a few times where the older guys would try and intimidate you because they didn’t want you to take their position and they were probably a bit envious with the hype we’d come in with.

“But Scott Lucas and I respected our elders and we knew we’d have to do our time, but at the same time I was a man in a hurry wanting to play AFL footy straight away.”

Lloyd played five games and kicked seven goals (three on debut) in his first season with the Bombers. His opening four games in 1996 didn’t set the world on fire and he spent most of that home and away season out of the side.

But the breakout performance came when Lloyd was recalled to the side in round 19 against the Crows. The 18 year old collected 30 possessions, took 12 marks and kicked seven goals. “I’d come off a broken thumb and I was having an ok first quarter and James Hird actually patted me on the shoulder and said ‘it’s your time’. It was only game ten but he said ‘if you need to sit on my head, sit on my head because I reckon you’re holding back’. It was the greatest thing I needed because I was idolising too many blokes I was playing with.

“It was then that I got my first best on ground and I believed I belonged at AFL level.”

Lloyd played out the rest of the season including the preliminary final loss to Sydney. When Tony Lockett kicked the match winning point, Lloyd was in hospital with a ruptured spleen. He missed selection in the opening two rounds of 1997 but still managed to kick 63 goals from his 20 games as Essendon missed the finals. Lloyd kicked 70 goals in 1998, 87 in 1999 and 109 in the Bombers dominant premiership season in 2000.

“We were winning our first few games of 2000 by ten goals plus and I felt like we’d beaten a lot of team before they’d even run down the race,” Lloyd said. “We had a tough backline, a really deep midfield and then a star-studded forward line.

“That first final against North Melbourne (Essendon won by 125 points) is probably the greatest ‘team football’ I’ve ever been involved with.”

It was on that day that Lloyd kicked his 100^th goal in a season for the first time. He was opposed to Mick Martyn – a man Lloyd concedes had worried him earlier in his career. Lloyd needed six goals to reach the landmark and with four goals and the match in the bank at three quarter time, Sheedy opened up the Essendon forward line.

“I ran out for [Jason] Dunstall’s 100^th in 1994, and six years later Dunstall was commentating when I was kicking the 100,” Lloyd said. “I kicked the second goal ten minutes into the last quarter. I’ll never for get the looks of jubilation on the guys’ faces for me and then seeing all these people charge onto the field. It was a very special moment.”

Lloyd kicks his 100th goal of the 2000 season against North Melbourne.