James Hird & Kevin Sheedy's last game with Essendon

I live in Perth and have been an Essendon supporter for nearly 50 years. Imagine my disappointment when James Hird announced his retirement, but then also imagine my glee when I found out his last game was going to be at Subiaco oval and everyone in the crowd would wave their scarves and jumpers for one last time in memory of the great Kevin Sheedy.

Then imagine my frustrations about how do I get a ticket to the game? The football Gods must have been smiling on my big time, because a person I work with was going overseas for the last couple of rounds of the season and knowing I was a Bombers fan gave me his membership ticket for the last Eagles home game. Which amazingly was against Essendon.

I got to the game with my old (I do mean old) Essendon jumper and was surrounded by all these Eagles supporters.

Things were not going to plan with the Eagles up by nearly 8 goals at 3/4 time. Then in the last quarter with Hird in the middle and Lucas up forward the tide started to turn. Lucas kicked an amazing 7 goals in the last term and Essendon got to within 3 points of the Eagles with a couple of minutes to play and the place was stunned. The Eagles ended up winning by 8 points.

After the game, not one single person left the stadium. Everyone was waving their scarf or jumper or whatever as a tribute to Kevin Sheedy.

There was a tribute to the two great men on the big screen and everyone was totally spell-bound. There were also presentations to Hird and Sheedy after the game.

Hird had a fantastic game and collected 34 possessions including one of his trade mark miracle goals from the boundary. Even at my ripe old age of mid 50's I had a tear in my eyes when they were both chaired off for the last time. This was also Daniel Chicks 250th AFL game and he too was chaired off, but without a scaric of a lie the greatest cheer from the fantastic crowd of 42,000+ was for James Hird.

Good onya Hirdy we will miss you!