Essendon champion Gavin Wanganeen highlighted his “red and black blood” as he returned to the club to be honoured as a Bomber Legend.
Wanganeen played 127 of his 300 games for the Bombers, and despite playing the remainder of his career with Port Adelaide he still recalls his days at Essendon with great fondness.
“My time at the mighty Bombers - they’re times I will never forget and I’ll take with me,” Wanganeen said.
“There is always red and black blood in me. It feels like not too long ago that I rocked up to Windy Hill to do my first pre-season as a 17-year-old.
“Hirdy and myself, we did our first pre-season together back many years ago.”
While Wanganeen entered Essendon as a young boy with a light frame, his experience playing senior football in the SANFL and natural footballing ability put him in good stead at the start of his career.
“I was quite ambitious as a young fella and had high standards and expectations,” he said.
“I was quite confident in my own ability and I just wanted to get to the big league as quick as possible and play well in the big league as quick as possible, I didn’t see age as a barrier.
“I just think I was destined to play footy. My mum’s brothers played footy and grew up playing footy, so it was destiny I suppose.”
In a career littered with accolades, perhaps Wanganeen’s biggest achievements took place in 1993, a year in which he took all before him.
Wanganeen was a crucial part of the Baby Bombers’ premiership and was rewarded with the Brownlow Medal in just his third season, also being named the Young Aboriginal Sports Star of the Year.
He admitted he may not have appreciated his Brownlow win at the time, but said the victory wasn’t lost on him.
“It’s something I’m really proud of. At the time, being 20 years of age, it probably doesn’t really sink in until you get older and you can appreciate what you achieve,” Wanganeen said.
At the end of 1996 Wanganeen returned to his home state to play for Port Adelaide, but the decision was far from easy.
Wanganeen said if it weren’t for the untimely conclusion of his contract with the Bombers he might never have departed Essendon.
“The unlucky thing for Essendon was that I was coming out of contract that year and Port were only able to take uncontracted players, so if the administrators had signed me up the previous year or two years before on a longer-term contract I would have never played for Port Adelaide.
“I was still quite young, but I’d played 127 games with the mighty Bombers (and) played in a premiership. It was hard, I just felt like I was letting people down and it was a tough decision, it really was.”
Wanganeen admitted feeling regret of his decision as Essendon concluded an astonishing year with a dominant win in the 2000 Grand Final.
“I remember watching the 2000 Grand Final when the Bombers beat Melbourne and they flogged them,” he said.
“I thought to myself, ‘yeah look I’ve missed out on that, if I don’t play in a premiership with Port my decision would have been the wrong one’ – I was still thinking about the Bombers even when I wasn’t playing for them.
“That was a sad day personally for me, because I wasn’t here to play in that final with them.”
Wanganeen has been selected as the club’s first Bomber Legend of the season and will be honoured pre-game at Essendon’s opening game of the season against the Crows on Friday night.
“It’s a huge honour to come back to the club and to be recognised at this great club where I had six wonderful years,” Wanganeen said.
The five-time All Australian remains living in Adelaide, but said he still takes a great deal of pride out of being a former Bomber and loves returning to Melbourne when he can.
“It’s so special to be back here and when I come to Melbourne,” he said.
“All of the Essendon supporters that come up to me and still mention ‘you were my favourite player’ and ‘I loved you’, it really does make you feel really proud to have that connection to the mighty Bombers.
“I’m really proud of my history here at this great club.”
Wanganeen retired as a member of the Essendon and Indigenous Teams of the Century and was been inducted into the AFL Hall of Fame, but has since ventured into a new field.
He now spends his time as a contemporary indigenous artist where he has contributed to the game through designing Essendon’s 2016 Dreamtime at the G guernsey as well as the match balls in last year’s Sir Doug Nicholls Indigenous Round.
Wanganeen said he was always interested in pursuing an art career after seeing his members of his family paint growing up.
“Having that indigenous background myself I love Aboriginal art, so I thought I’d just have a go myself.
“Probably (in) the last two years I’ve started to focus more on my art and it’s going extremely well.”
You can see the Bomber Legend’s art HERE.
CLICK HERE to purchase tickets to watch the Bombers take on the Crows in their Friday-night blockbuster.
