At 40, even the AFL’s indestructible Inspector Gadget needs the occasional bit of maintenance.
On the day Dustin Fletcher became only the second active VFL-AFL player to celebrate the milestone birthday, he was left out of Essendon’s match against Fremantle on Saturday night with a groin injury.
His first Bombers coach Kevin Sheedy strongly backed the break, saying it is foolish to play veterans such as Fletcher and Sydney great Adam Goodes each week.
The man nicknamed Inspector Gadget for his long limbs and uncanny ability to spoil opposition forwards is also three games shy of becoming only the third AFL player to reach 400 games.
But Essendon are playing the Dockers in Perth and this is the first of successive six-day breaks.
Fletcher was also subbed off briefly last Sunday under the concussion rule during the two-point win over St Kilda, where he was again among Essendon’s best players.
“They’re doing the right thing … they don’t have to play him every week,” Sheedy said.
“That should be done with quite a number of players, particularly players over 30, like Goodes and Fletcher.
“The more you actually look after them, the longer they can play.
“They do not have to play 22 games a year, that is just foolish selection.”
The only other VFL-AFL player to reach 40 was St Kilda’s Vic Cumberland, who retired at 43 in 1920.
“To be 40 and be still playing, it feels alright,” Fletcher said.
“In this caper, once you get to 30 these days, it’s year-by-year stuff.
“And as you get older, birthdays are just birthdays – no-one likes getting old.”
Of all the improbable features of Fletcher’s AFL career, one of the most amazing is how little he has changed.
Fletcher started in 1993 at a rake-thin 78kg who was still at school.
His weight topped at 100kg in the early 2000s, but he is now 93kg and still looks skinny.
Fletcher’s aversion to the weights room is a running joke at Essendon.
“They (his weights) haven’t been too big … but I do get in the gym and look like I’m doing something,” Fletcher said with typical nonchalance.
“Sometimes it’s looking out the window here and watching the rain.
“You have to do the work and I do just enough to get by.”
Sheedy presented Fletcher with a birthday cake after Thursday training, 22 years after the club famously took a big punt on picking him as a teenager.
Fletcher said “straight off the bat”, Sheedy has had the biggest influence on him at Essendon.
And Sheedy repaid the compliment, saying it was abundantly clear in `93 that it was a risk worth taking.
“His decision making and reading of play was very good – he was a very good tennis player, very good close up at the net,” the former Bombers coach said.
“(He has) that ability to close well and close quickly on a forward who’s been delivered a very good ball.
“He had that more than most others.”
Sheedy said one of the big reasons Fletcher had lasted so long is that he simply does not worry.
In keeping with that reputation, Fletcher is unfussed about whether he keeps playing beyond this season to close in on Michael Tuck’s 426-game AFL record.
“I will play out this year like it’s going to be my last and do what I can,” Fletcher said.
“We’ll just see how we go.”
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