By Ian McCullough
November 10th 2009 @ 2:15am
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Sheedy bullish about Western Sydney challenge
Kevin Sheedy believes he can emulate the success he enjoyed with Essendon’s Baby Bombers of 1993 at the new Western Sydney team.
The four-time AFL premiership mentor, who was unveiled as the Great Western Sydney (GWS) franchise’s inaugural head coach on Monday, said he was under no illusions about the size of the task ahead of him in building a club in rugby league and soccer heartland.
But Sheedy – who was appointed by the AFL rather than by the fledgling franchise – was relishing the chance to create another premiership-winning team from scratch.
He has signed a three-year contract, taking in the new team’s first season in the AFL in 2012.
“Imagine you can create a club a good as the Sydney Opera House,” Sheedy said.
“This area has that opportunity … to create one of the greatest clubs this country has ever seen.”
The new team, which is yet to be officially named, will be able to pick the eyes out of the 2011 national draft, and the 61-year-old is confident he can discover another James Hird or Dustin Fletcher.
“The 1993 (Essendon) premiership side were a bunch of kids in Year 12 or just left Year 12,” he said.
“You had a fullback in Dustin Fletcher who people said was too skinny.
“And at the start of 1993 we didn’t know what was going to happen with these kids and by the end of 1993 we had won the premiership by eight goals.
“These were kids with no names, some of them have now played 300 games and become legends.
“We have made and built some great opportunities in this game and this is the opportunity this area is gong to get here, make no mistake about it.”
In addition to nurturing local talent in the western Sydney area, Sheedy is already planning to look further afield to find players who have the potential to play in the AFL.
“There are 12 million people living off islands around the mainland of Australia,” he said.
“If you look at (rising West Coast star) Nic Naitanui, his parents went to Perth from Fiji,” he said.
“Had he landed in Sydney he may not have played AFL, just as likely he wouldn’t have played rugby league.”
AFL commissioner Sam Mostyn, who was a key figure in bringing Sheedy to the new franchise, denied the appointment was primarily a marketing move.
“You might call that marketing, I just call that the most brilliant strategy to imbed yourself in a culture and a part of Australia that’s not used to this game,” she said.
“There is nothing wrong with marketing, especially in a region that has little interest in the game.”
After playing in three premiership sides in 251 games at Richmond from 1967-79, Sheedy coached at Essendon for 27 years until his messy departure in 2007.
He has since worked at the AFL in a development role and the league’s chief executive Andrew Demetriou bristled at any suggestion that Sheedy was past it as a coach.
“It’s a complete nonsense comment and people who want to push that line, they need to get out in the real world,” Demetriou said.
Guy McKenna, coach of the new Gold Coast club, which joins the AFL in 2011, said he was not surprised by the decision to appoint Sheedy on a three-year contract.
“Sheeds is always keen to coach. And typical Sheeds he’s comes down and he’s done the AFL ambassador role, he’s gone to all the clubs and pinched all the good strengths of all those clubs and harnessed all that,” McKenna said.
“I think he’ll be fantastic.”
NRL chief executive David Gallop refused to comment on the appointment of Sheedy when contacted.
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