Essendon champion James Hird says removing the ‘fear’ and having a personal game plan, can help players perform on the big stage.

Throughout his 253 game career, Hird established himself as one of the best players in the competition and developed a reputation as a player who stood up in the games that mattered most.

He won the Norm Smith Medal in 2000 and also performed well in the 1993 Grand Final as a 20 year old.

Hird also won three ANZAC Day medals during his career.

“That fear of failure can really weigh a player down,” Hird told RSN.

“If you can remove that and focus on what you need to do and have a little plan within a game … what are the three things – outside the game plan that the team has – that I need to do to re-focus myself back on the game?

“I think that helps you because if you just go into that game with your mind wandering and worrying about the result, worrying about whether you’re going to play badly, am I good enough … generally that sort of pressure will cripple you.

“For me it was having that plan, but also saying ‘if I play bad, I play bad ... and I’m just going to go out there and give it everything I’ve got and try to have as much fun as I can’.”

Hird said while the memories of Grand Final day fade over time, the bond established on the way to achieving such a significant feat always remains.

“You reflect on the people you were with – the memories of the Grand Final dwindle as you go in terms of kicks, marks and handballs,” Hird said.

“But the people who you worked so hard to get there with, they stay with you for a long time.

“We won one very early in 1993 when most of us were in our second year of AFL football and then it took a long time.

“McVeigh, Rama, the Johnson boys, Dean Solomon – they added a whole new wave of youth into our team and we became very close as a group, and probably for a lot of us we’re still very close because of the times we had both on and off the field.”

Hird won his first premiership with the Bombers in just his second season.

He had to wait another seven years and overcome a serious foot injury on the way to the Club’s next premiership in 2000.

“The ’93 Grand Final was just such a blur … I’d literally been in Melbourne for two years and it was the ride of a life time,” Hird said.

“We were training a couple of times a week, going out most nights, playing games of football, 18-19 years old … it was a thrill.

“But the 2000 Grand Final – there was a lot of stories in there.

“John Barnes had played in four losing Grand Finals, Scott Lucas had missed the Preliminary Final against Carlton, most of the boys had played in that Carlton Preliminary Final and lost, we’d lost the Preliminary Final a few years earlier to the Sydney Swans by a point, Matthew Lloyd had ruptured his spleen, I’d had my foot dramas.

“Many of us had had a chequered four or five years before that and we’d done something really special in 2000 where I thought we worked hard together, knuckled down and still to this day it’s the most wins ever in a season and the most successful single-season team ever.

“So that one definitely stands out.”