Essendon Football Club

Essendon Football Club, nicknamed The Bombers, is an Australian rules football club and is part of the Australian Football League. Formed in 1871 as a junior club and as a senior club in 1873, it is headquartered at the Essendon Recreation Reserve, Windy Hill in the Melbourne suburb of Essendon, but match day home games are at Docklands Stadium. They share the most premierships of any VFL/AFL club.
Some doubt exists as to precisely when the Essendon Football Club came into being, with 1871, '72 and '73 all being suggested as possible starting dates. The Essendon football club began from a meeting held at the home of a well-known brewery family, the McCrackens, whose Ascot Vale property hosted a team of local junior players. There they formed the Senior Club at "Ailsa", Kent St, Ascot Vale. At this stage, the uniform consisted of black and red stripes.[1]
Charlie Pearson, was the first to bring the skill of "overhead" [marking] to the game and would also be named "Champion of the Colony". In 1883 Essendon travelled to Adelaide where it engaged in 4 matches, winning 3 and losing 1, Essendon was involved in the first match in 1886 where the goal umpires used white flags to signal scores, and in 1888 it was one of several VFA clubs to confront a team of a visiting rugby players from Great Britain who played rugby while in New Zealand and New South Wales, and Australian football in Victoria and South Australia. Essendon won 7.13 to 3.3 (behinds were recorded in the score at this time, but were not actually counted until 1897). They were the first team to wear white shorts in away matches in 1893.
In 1891 Essendon were the leading side in the Association, comfortably securing the premiership with only 1 loss from 20 matches played. The following season saw the arrival of one of the club's greatest players, Albert Thurgood, who kicked a VFA record 56 goals for the season as Essendon again won the premiership, with only one loss for the season. In 1893 they were the "champion team" winning the premiership and going through the season undefeated, and in 1894 they made it four premierships in a row with 16 wins and a draw from 18 matches. In 1895 Albert Thurgood moved to Western Australia and this coincided with a slump in Essendon's fortunes.
In the 1922 season, back at Essendon at last, they reached the final four for the first time since 1912, finishing in third place.
In the 1923 season the Dons topped the ladder with 13 wins from 16 games. After a 17 point second semi final loss to South Melbourne defeated Fitzroy (who had beaten South Melbourne) in the challenge final: Essendon 8.15 (63) to Fitzroy 6.10 (46). Amongst Essendon's best players were half forward flanker George "Tich" Shorten, center half forward Justin McCarthy, centre half back Tom Fitzmaurice, rover Frank Maher and wingman Jack Garden.
This was one of Essendon's most famous sides, dubbed the "Mosquito Fleet", due to the number of small, very fast players in the side. Six players were 5'6" (167 cm) or smaller.
Collingwood succumbed first as the Dons powered their way to an 82 point first semi final victory, and a fortnight later it was the turn of the North Melbourne Football Club as Essendon won the preliminary final a good deal more comfortably than the ultimate margin of 17 points suggested. In the grand final, Essendon were pitted against Carlton and in a match that was a total travesty as a contest they overwhelmed the Blues to the tune of 73 points, 18.17 (125) to 6.16 (52). Best for the Dons included pacy aboriginal half back flanker Norm McDonald, ruckman Bob McLure, and rovers Bill Hutchinson and Ron McEwin. John Coleman also did well, registering 6 majors.
The Dons sustained numerous injuries in the preliminary final and the selectors sprang a surprise on grand final day by naming the officially retired Dick Reynolds as 20th man. 'King Richard' was powerless to prevent the inevitable, although leading at half time, the Geelong kicked five goals to three points in the third quarter to set up victory by 11 points.
Essendon slumped to 8th in 1952 but John Coleman was in irrepressible form managing 103 goals for the year. Hugh Buggy noted in 'The Argus':
It was the wettest season for twenty two years and Coleman showed that since the war he was without peer in the art of goal kicking.
Two seasons later Coleman's career was tragically ended after he dislocated a knee during the round 8 clash with the North Melbourne Football Club at Essendon. Aged just twenty five, he had kicked 537 goals in only 98 VFL games in what was generally a fairly low scoring period for the game. His meteoric rise and fall were clearly the stuff of legend, and few if any players, either before or since, have had such an immense impact over so brief a period.
Making the finals proved to be a habit of Sheedy's, with the side again making the finals in 1982 and 1983. Essendon capped the '83 season by making their first grand final in 15 years, and though they would go down to Hawthorn by a then record margin, the stage was set for Essendon to finally return to the top.
Essendon won the night flag again in 1984 and emerged as co-favourite for the flag along with Hawthorn. Essendon finished the year on top of the ladder and came up against the Hawks again in the second semi-final. The Hawks would again prevail, but this time in a close, spirited encounter in which the young Dons began to believe that they were the equal of the mighty Hawks. Essendon then obliterated Collingwood by 133 points in the preliminary final the following week to make it back to the big stage and face the Hawks one more time. This time the results would be different.
For most of the 1984 VFL Grand Final, things looked very much like 1983, as Hawthorn would kick the first four goals of the match and carry that margin all the way to three-quarter time. It appeared almost certain that Hawthorn would win back-to-back premierships. Sheedy pulled some of his now famous positional moves, and the Bombers, led by Leon Baker's four goals in the term, put on a stunning 9 goal run putting them well in front, and the Dons finally had their 13th flag after nearly 20 years of trying.
Essendon was even more dominant in 1985, they again finished on top of the ladder, only losing two games for the season. Essendon met Hawthorn in the Grand Final again, but this time it wasn't even close, as the Bombers managed to get some revenge for 1983 and thrashed the Hawks by 78 points.
The second occurred when Collingwood and West Coast played a drawn qualifying final, resulting in a replay which delayed the rest of the finals series a week. Essendon would not play a match for three weeks, and with some of the players having been rested during Round 22, there were some players who had not played for nearly a month when it came time to face Collingwood in the second semi-final. The Pies won this easily, and the flat Bombers were forced to regroup and managed to knock off a young West Coast squad in the prelim.
By this stage most of the more experienced players were nearing retirement, as evident in that second semi final, and was evident again on Grand Final day, in which Collingwood won convincingly.
Essendon had been somewhat unheralded prior to 1999, and things started very badly as James Hird suffered stress fractures in his foot that ended his season and threatened his career. Essendon finish on top of the ladder and had beaten the eventual premiers North Melbourne twice. They defeated Sydney easily in the qualifying final and faced Carlton in the preliminary final.
The 1999 preliminary final , Carlton defeated the more fancied Bombers by a point. This would be the fourth final lost by a point under Sheedy.
The failure of 1999 caused the players to redouble their efforts, having resolved to use that prelim defeat to motivate them like nothing else could. As a result, the 2000 season would prove to be the best Essendon, or perhaps any side in the league, has produced since Collingwood provided the league's only undefeated Home and Away season in 1929. Essendon would lose just one solitary match during the home-and-away season, winning 20 consecutive matches before losing to the Western Bulldogs in round 21 denying Essendon an undefeated season.
Essendon finished the home and away season at 21-1, then defeated North Melbourne by an record 125 points in the Qualifying Final.
Essendon face Carlton in the Preliminary Final but this time the Dons easily accounted for them by 45 points. The Bombers outmatched Melbourne by 60 points in the Grand Final to win a record equalling 16th premiership. The Norm Smith medal was awarded to James Hird. The side looked set to repeat their success the following year, but late season injuries took their toll and the side went down to the emerging Brisbane Lions in the 2001 Grand Final.
Essendon, having been a consistent side over a long period of time, suffered from lack of quality draft picks and injuries, and this finally started to catch up with them. The 2005 season saw Essendon miss the finals for the first time since 1997 and finish with their worst season to that time under Sheedy's coaching, 13th position with 8 wins and 14 losses. With the Bombers looking towards a new era, it was announced on September 27 that Matthew Lloyd would replace James Hird as Essendon captain for the 2006 season, marking the end of Hird's reign since he took over the captaincy in 1998. Even with the failure of 2005, Essendon have played finals in 19 out of 25 seasons under Sheedy, with six top of the ladder finishes, seven Grand Final appearances and four premierships. Despite this, Lloyd notched up his 200th game in round 13 against St Kilda, winning by 15 points to keep their season alive.