Source :- THE AGE NEWS
Thirty years ago, Essendon, Collingwood and the Returned Services League built the Anzac Day clash at the MCG in the spirit of commemoration and remembrance. Tens of thousands of footy fans descended for the first instalment of a match that has been played every year since – except the pandemic-affected 2020 season.
If you weren’t there on April 25, 1995, you might have tried to get in or know someone who was unsuccessful, perhaps one of the fans who took in the experience in the parkland surrounding the ’G instead. And the official crowd of 94,825 – the third largest VFL/AFL home-and-away crowd ever recorded – might have even been off the mark.
“I remember going to the game and being at the AFL lunch [with] Ross Oakley, and we were getting messages through that the crowds are unbelievable,” remembers Eddie McGuire, who became Collingwood president three years later.
“Then we’re hearing word that they’ve just opened the gates. They’ve kicked the gates down in the Northern Stand! They always said it was 90-something [thousand fans in the ground]. It was well over 100 [thousand] that day.
“The game just built and built and built. There was something like 20 or 30,000 people who didn’t get in and [were in] the parks. And then they surrounded all the pubs.”
Kevin Sheedy, the brainchild of the concept, said this week: “I think the first game was very important for the history of the game, to be honest.”
The fans came, and the players delivered with an iconic draw. Mention Saverio Rocca, a man mountain who excelled at Collingwood and North Melbourne before forging a career in the NFL, and try escaping any reference to his nine goals that day. Dermott Brereton took to the field in his only season at the Magpies, and a young Nathan Buckley, dashing through the middle with the scores tied late, infamously opted to try and find Rocca with a pass instead of going for goal himself.
Collingwood’s 1990 premiership captain Tony Shaw was the club’s runner that day.
“I still remember yelling out to Bucks when he was coming out the centre and kicked the ball to Sav Rocca,” Shaw recalled. “I was saying, ‘Kick for goal’.”
Just as Rocca’s haul is a part of footy folklore, Anzac Day footy offers a collection of great moments and memories.
Think the likes of Dane Swan, James Hird and Scott Pendlebury, with cameos from Mark McGough and Andrew Lovett. In ’95, Rocca climbed onto Ryan O’Connor’s shoulders to pull down a great grab. In wonderful symmetry, the 29th instalment last year also finished in a draw and Jamie Elliott pulled down a ripping mark.
The first Essendon-Collingwood clash of any season is closely intertwined with April 25 at the MCG, a fixture that doesn’t exist without the sombre marking of a day of remembrance.
How did it all start?
Collingwood played a blockbuster Anzac Day match in 1977, but it was Richmond, not Essendon, lining up against them in front of more than 92,000 at the MCG.
Tommy Hafey was in his first year as Magpies coach after crossing from the Tigers, where he had led the club to four premierships and Kevin Sheedy was one of his pupils.
Kevin Sheedy and Leigh Matthews at the Shrine of Remembrance this week.Credit: AFL Photos
Quirkily, Sheedy booted the ball about 40 metres the wrong way at the start of the third quarter. “As for Hafey’s former players in Richmond jumpers, it looked at times as though they were trying to help him win it,” The Age’s chief football writer Ron Carter wrote. “Kevin Sheedy, of all people, grabbed the ball in the centre at the first bounce after half-time and kicked it the wrong way, straight to Phil Carman.”
The Anzac Day occasion stayed with Sheedy, who had served for two years in the army; just two days after he won the 1969 premiership, he had to front up to the Swan Street barracks in Richmond.
Decades later, he was pottering in his garden and focusing on ways to promote the game.
“I went overseas and did some courses on creative thinking and all that sort of stuff and … put that idea up, and it got through all the corridors of power,” Sheedy said this week.
“I’m glad it did because being an ex-serviceman I’m very proud of what our men and women have done in the war zones [for the] history of our country.”
Sheedy was soon on the phone to Collingwood’s director of football Graeme “Gubby” Allan.
“He knew RSL boss Bruce Ruxton, and Ruxton had black-and-white through his veins,” Sheedy wrote in a newspaper column.
McGuire had no doubt that the origins of 1995 “came from desperation”, as Anzac Day did not go close to attracting the recognition it does now.
“I actually used to be in the school band,” recalled McGuire. “A couple of times we had to march two or three times on Anzac Day because, you know, people were protesting, and the whole thing was starting to die off in a lot of ways. Anzac Day was really on the wane.
“Those guys [in the 1990s] realised that the parade and the whole remembrance was starting to fade.
“Sheeds, in his inimitable fashion, remembering the day that he kicked the ball the wrong way … geez, I tell you what, he picked it up, ran with it the right way after that.”
Growing the presence
While footy on Anzac Day has had different incarnations (the VFL in 1986 experimented with an MCG double-header, coupled with a game at Waverley Park), neither the competing clubs nor the AFL have attracted any stringent criticism for the occasion.
Much of the consternation has instead been whether the MCG event should be shared with other clubs.
“What I always argued with people who used to say, ‘Oh, they should share it around’ … [I argued] there’s no two teams who can guarantee 100,000 over the years, up and down [with fluctuating form]. But Collingwood and Essendon did it, and they did the day proud,” McGuire said.
“Now people go there, and the pride you can feel in the crowd [with the mood] being absolutely stony silent, being able to hear the flags fluttering above the stands.”
Sheedy believes the game’s presence on Anzac Day is significant for the national identity.
“Because, you know, a lot of people haven’t seen any war,” he said. “We’re still a lucky country in some ways, got probably slightly lazy, and I think we need these sorts of games that can actually make Australians feel about how great the country can still be.
“Getting a game like this and showing it to the whole of Australia is pretty good. Maybe even one day you could take it to the Brisbane Olympics, you don’t know.”
The legend of 1995 lives on
Rocca and Essendon defender Dustin Fletcher got together a few years back to watch a replay of 1995.
“On the way in there I couldn’t believe the traffic,” Fletcher said in the video. “I knew it was going to be big, but to have a lockout, to play on a Tuesday and Anzac Day … it was a day when the shops weren’t open; for footy to be played was massive.”
Rocca remarked: “It’s pretty eerie being out there and having that silence with 95,000 people. It was pretty special … You get goosebumps.”
The two were absorbed by the contest. “It feels like a final, even looking back on it,” Fletcher said.
Rocca took in the replay of one of his three goals for the opening quarter: “I thought it was loud at this stage. It got even louder. Like it was deafening later in the game.”
Despite the frustration of sharing the premiership points, the result matched the mood.
“Looking back now I think it’s fitting that it ended in a draw, and it really set the tone … the expectation is that you fight hard, not only for yourself and for your team and your situation, but what the Anzacs stood for,” Rocca said.
Bragging rights have waxed and waned ever since.
Said Shaw with a chuckle: “In a bad sort of coaching era, I think I won three out of four Anzac Days against Sheeds, so I tell Sheeds every time I see him.”
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