Over the past couple of years, the AFL media has gone with an early call.

That is, there would be a mass exodus of Essendon players because of the circumstance they found themselves under. Certainly, unfairly, the pointy end of a tragic breakdown in trust between club leaders, staff and the players. Who would blame them at the time? They have always had the right to leave. Fortunately, the ‘three C’s’ have returned to the Essendon Culture. Confidence, Care and Compassion. Players are free to make their choice. Bit by bit they return. Well done to the Club on providing the environment where players are ‘falling back in love ‘with their footy club.

It wasn’t always a matter of choice. Some of our players once had no choice. It was October 2002 and the media naturally called it ‘trade week highlights’. Highlights!! Gee. Three of our most popular and structurally important premiership heroes in Justin Blumfield, Blake Caracella, and Chris Heffernan were lost in a Bomber exodus to Richmond, Brisbane and Melbourne respectively. Yep just a list of names being traded out at this time of year! A list of names!! Essendon has not won a finals game since 2004. This was the beginning of that ‘run’. This was a breakdown of trust. Different to recent events of course but a similar theme in loss of trust and faith in our system. I hope we are all learning our lessons.

Blake Caracella would continue his career at Brisbane and Collingwood.

This was a group of mates that bought Essendon ultimate success. They couldn’t have been closer. For example, just a small snapshot. Together with coaches and staff we would spend Monday evening together at a local Essendon pub, eating the wrong food, sampling the local brew and the odd one sneaking out the back ‘for a dart’. But that was us. UNBREAKABLE.

Peter Jackson was an excellent administrator, but was not renowned for his football knowledge. Graeme McMahon, sadly still missed to this day, was a great Chairman and of course there was also Kevin Sheedy. The excellent Matthew Drain led a united, supportive football department. Four powerful figures that the club had the utmost faith and trust in. The working relationship, trust, integrity and empathy of the big 4 are the keys to club culture. They drive it.

We had lost a GF to Brisbane but we were still in the hunt at the start of 2002. There was good news when then CEO Peter Jackson informed us that James Hird’s salary would have a significant veterans allowance attached. Around the mid-season with Essendon coming off three years of high level form, including two grand finals and a 1-point preliminary final loss, Peter Jackson strode into List management/Match Committee and informed them that he was extremely confident that the AFL would not include Hird’s veteran allowance in our salary cap. So players were signed up on that understanding. Jackson was after all, the CEO.

It turned out to be a terrible miscalculation by Jackson when the AFL decided to stick with the existing veteran’s agreement. The challenge was then passed over to the Match Committee. We were around $600,000 over the cap. We had to bring the salary cap down and ultimately Essendon had to sack three premiership stars and ultimately tore “the heart out of the club”.

Blake Caracella, Justin Blumfield and Chris Heffernan were told to find new clubs when the Essendon executive realised they had wrongly banked on Hird becoming a veteran in 2003. Was it ever the same club again? Justin Blumfield was in the Cook Islands on holidays. The coaches shared the job of ringing the players individually. The ramifications of this went well past 2002-2003.

Matthew Lloyd, a champion player and close friend of the three boys said; “It ripped the heart out of our footy Club. The boys were in tears and said we don’t want to play for another Club.” As a member of the coaching panel at the time I find no reason to disagree with Lloyd.

None of the players were the same players we saw at Essendon. Essendon was never the same without those players.

Blake Caracella added another 61 matches to his career, including 34 for Brisbane and 27 for Collingwood before a serious neck injury ended his career. He played in two premierships, one for the Bombers in 2000 and his second with Brisbane in 2003. Justin Blumfield’s career finished with Richmond at the end of 2004, where he added a further 19 matches to his career after playing 129 for Essendon. Chris Heffernan played 47 matches for Melbourne after leaving the Bombers in 2003. He then returned to Essendon in 2006 and finished his career on 170 games in 2007.

To compound the issue, Matthew Drain left, and was replaced by Dominic Cato, Graeme McMahon retired (irreplaceable), two pillars in Sheeds and John Quinn fought on while all assistants left or were replaced. No funding was allocated to recruiting and Sheed’s and Adrian Dodoro wrongly get canned for their ‘bargain basement ‘selections at the time.

No money was spent on upgrade of facilities and in 10 years we went from state of the art to totally inadequate. It was one of the reasons Essendon left our spiritual home for Tullamarine. The Club continued to make million dollar profits, but I have no idea why some of this wasn’t distributed to club facilities and recruiting.

Eventually the big 3 had left the building. McMahon retired, Drain moved on and Sheedy replaced. Jackson remained to oversee the appointment of young coach, Matthew Knights.

Peter Jackson will maintain that the ‘clean out’ of all Sheedy’s strong allies had to be done to give Knights a blank canvas to operate without the immense shadow. To Sheedy’s great credit he once said; ‘If I had my time again I should have left when I sacked Blumfield, Heffernan and Caracella’. In fairness to you Kevin it wasn’t your fault and you didn’t sack them!

The US Marine core trademark and ethos includes a saying: ‘You must have generational focus’. This means the culture, ethos and standards are passed down from generation to generation. It has to be the same in a football club. The ‘same old’ fabric of Essendon has been tested severely twice in the past 14 years. Our generational focus was severely diluted.

Essendon are slowly, methodically getting back on track. If you put people first, show respect to Essendon people and maintain unconditional trust then that track is clear and without detours.