30 years of Anzac Day: How the Bombers-Magpies tradition was born (2025)

KEVIN Sheedy was pottering around his garden in late 1994 when he remembered a seed that was planted at the MCG almost two decades earlier.

The second-biggest home and away crowd at the time had turned up on Anzac Day in 1977 to watch Collingwood play his Richmond near the end of his playing days.

Nothing had really come close to that event since. Football hadn't been played on Anzac Day until 1960 after an Act of Parliament lifted restrictions. For years, fixtures on April 25 bounced around suburban VFL grounds, withering on the vine until Sheedy intervened.

By that stage, Sheedy was a three-time premiership coach at Essendon after playing in three flags for Richmond across his 251-game career in yellow and black. He was regarded as a visionary and when then-Bombers president Ron Evans sent him to Florida in the early 1990s to study an innovation course at Disney World, Sheedy came back with ideas to build the game by buildingbiggergames.

Dreamtime at the 'G would eventually launch in 2005 to celebrate the contribution of Indigenous people in the game. The Country Game would arrive 10 years later. But with the trip to America fuelling his creativity and the clear memory of 92,436 people cramming into the MCG in 1977, Sheedy picked up the phone in his office at Windy Hill to call Graeme 'Gubby' Allan, who was Collingwood's football manager at the time, and pitched the idea.

Allan had a relationship with RSL president Bruce Ruxton and arranged a meeting days later with Sheedy, Collingwood present Allan McAlister and Essendon president David Shaw at the Hilton Hotel. Sheedy had a deep appreciation for soldiers after being drafted into the army in 1969, where he spent two years in a construction squadron during his time playing for Richmond.

"Most people think I'm a pretty radical person, but I'm not really, I'm actually pretty conservative. I went overseas and had a look around at what other sports were doing and how they were creating bigger games and inventing ideas. It was hard to come back to Melbourne, because we were a very conservative place in Australia, but we got it up and running," Sheedy toldAFL.com.authis week.

"Gubby was the No.1 person involved to get Collingwood to the table. Gubby got Allan McAlister to the table, I got David Shaw and that's how it got going. To be quite honest, at the start, it was a cold call to Bruce Ruxton. There was only about 8,000 people turned up at the Shrine one morning on Anzac Day and I thought that wasn't on, personally.

"I told him we can do better than this. He asked me what the suggestion was and I said I think we can play a game on that day. He wanted to know what the AFL thought because they weren't dancing with each other at that time, mainly because of the time slot of the game versus how much time after the march. They were slightly not happy with each other.

"A lot of people need to thank Bruce Ruxton for saying yes. The whole deal in the end was the AFL owned the draw, but Bruce had to say yes because the returned soldiers are the important people of Anzac Day. It's about really thanking the defence forces of Australia, which is where me spending some time in the army helped."

Friday marks the 30thanniversary of the inaugural Essendon v Collingwood Anzac Day fixture, which quickly became – and has remained – the biggest game on the home and away fixture, attracting more than 90,000 fans on 10 occasions and a crowd in the 80,000s 14 times. Only once has the crowd been below that when the capacity wasn't reduced for the Commonwealth Games redevelopment or the COVID-19 pandemic.

Sheedy and then-Collingwood coach Leigh Matthews didn't know what to expect ahead of the 1995 fixture, but they didn't think 94,825 people – the second-largest crowd behind the 95,179 in 2023 – would arrive that day. That crowd, which is the third-highest home and away crowd ever, caused chaos outside the ground with cars backed up for kilometres.

Many players were late to the pre-game meetings, including Essendon's Che Cockatoo-Collins, who had been watching the reserves game at Victoria Park before being a late inclusion for the blockbuster a few kilometres down the road at the MCG.

"All the players were late to the team meetings," Sheedy said. "There wasn't much strategy going on before the game because every car was lined up trying to get to the MCG. We had phone calls coming in from everywhere. Most of the hard work is done during the week anyway and the team meeting is a bit of a top up. In general, we just told the players don't panic, get there when you can."

The first Anzac Day clash between the Bombers and the Magpies ended in a famous draw. Collingwood full forward Saverio Rocca was retrospectively awarded the first Anzac Day Medal after kicking nine goals in a game that ended 111-111. A best on ground medal has been awarded since 2000, but ahead of the 2011 fixture, the AFL recognised the first five recipients with medals. Scott Pendlebury and James Hird are both three-time winners, while Dane Swan and Rocca won it twice.

Sheedy played eight games for the 'Big V' during his playing career and coached Victoria four times back when State of Origin was at its pinnacle, but the Australian Football Hall of Fame legend believes Anzac Day is a more momentous occasion.

"It's bigger than State of Origin," he said, "because some players turn up on Anzac Day and produce remarkable performances from inexperienced players like Mark McGough."

Now more than 50 years on since that game in 1977, which was Tom Hafey's first game as coach for Collingwood against Richmond, the side he led to four premierships, Sheedy pinpoints that day as the stimulus for the modern-day Anzac Day blockbuster.

"I couldn't believe the crowd," he said. "Two suburbs separated by Victoria Street. To turn up with nearly 100,000 people, that's what I learnt. It always stuck with me and so it should because it showed this had something. That was the catalyst technically, but you can't say that I'm going to coach and find an idea down the track."

Sheedy finished his coaching journey at Greater Western Sydney in 2013 after 678 games in charge for the Bombers and Giants – the third most behind Mick Malthouse (718) and Jock McHale (713), finishing with a fourth premiership in 2000. Thirty years after building a tradition built around a famous date, Sheedy is still tending to his garden and still as passionate as ever about growing the game.