Richmond’s Craig McRae and Essendon’s Matthew Egan will hold the coaching reins in their first Peter Jackson VFL Dreamtime games on Saturday, but the inexperienced mentors are no strangers to the Dreamtime game concept.
McRae, a triple premiership-winning forward at Brisbane, was an assistant coach with Richmond’s AFL team from 2007-09, when then-Essendon coach Kevin Sheedy’s idea for a match celebrating indigenous culture really took off.
The first AFL Dreamtime clash between the Bombers and Tigers happened in 2005, but it found its niche as a Saturday night showpiece of Indigenous Round two years later.
Egan, an All Australian defender at Geelong in 2007, was a line coach with Essendon’s AFL team for four years before becoming the VFL team’s senior coach in 2016. He’s seen how the club builds up to the occasion and said the VFL-listed Bombers were stoked to be part of Saturday’s game at Punt Road Oval.
“The players know the crowd’s probably going to be a bit bigger with everyone heading to the AFL game and hopefully coming beforehand to watch,” Egan said. “We were lucky enough to play in the ANZAC eve game and we built it up really big during the week – about the occasion and the significance of it – and there’s no difference this week.
“We had a big reconciliation morning on Monday with all Essendon staff and players, and Gavin Wanganeen – who created our Dreamtime guernsey – and indigenous players at our club spoke about where they’re from and a bit about their people.
“It’s just a significant week for the club.”
McRae said Richmond’s VFL-listed players and staff understood the significance of being included in the occasion, and had been building towards the Dreamtime game for weeks.
“It allows our VFL players, coaches and staff to be educated a little bit more around indigenous culture and the past and present contributions indigenous people have made, both in the footy world and life in general,” McRae said.
“We had a representative from the Korin Gamadji Institute (an indigenous education and development centre based at the Richmond FC) talk to our VFL-listed players a few weeks ago around the significance of the occasion and how lucky we are to be playing for the Sir Doug Nicholls Cup on Saturday.”
Sir Doug Nicholls was an early-20th-century footballer and became the first indigenous person to be knighted following his pioneering work as a campaigner for reconciliation.
The fact his name is on the VFL Dreamtime game’s winner’s trophy has extra significance for the Tigers this year. McRae said young AFL-listed player Nathan Drummond – a relative of Sir Doug Nicholls – would make his long-awaited return from a knee reconstruction on Saturday.
Essendon could also field several indigenous youngsters in the game, with Shaun Edwards, Jake Long and Yestin Eades having been VFL regulars in 2016.
Egan has taken over responsibility for the young Bombers’ development from Hayden Skipworth following a 2015 season in which the team was one step away from the VFL Grand Final. He said it had been “a pretty smooth transition” to the senior coaching role.
“All the players know what the program Hayden ran for the last three years looks like,” Egan said. “I also have assistants who coached in their own right last year in Paul Corrigan and Mark Corrigan, so we share the load a fair bit.
“I’ve absolutely loved the chance to pick apart the game plan and see if we can change things on game day to get us over the line, and plan training sessions all week instead of just being a part of training.”
Skipworth guided Essendon to a 44-point victory in last year’s VFL Dreamtime game, on a day when Alex Browne won the Sir Doug Nicholls Award for the best player on the ground and current AFL-listed Bomber Matt Dea was Richmond’s stand-out.
Egan said Dea could become a secret weapon for the Bombers this week and said he’d be chatting with the ex-Tiger “just to suss a few of their players out”.
McRae said he wouldn’t be too concerned about information being fed to the enemy though, as much had changed at the VFL Tigers since last year’s Dreamtime defeat.
“I looked at our list last week and we had 18 players who are first-year players, both AFL and VFL-listed,” McRae said. “I would’ve thought we’re a bit different to what we have been in the last 12-18 months.
“We’ve been really pleased with our new leaders. Tom Couch and Sam Darley have been outstanding players for us; they’ve lead from the front and been really consistent week to week. I’ve really enjoyed watching a couple of the young 23rd players grow too, in Tom Silvestro and Daniel Coffield.”
After five years at Collingwood helping out behind the scenes as Head of Development, McRae is enjoying finally “having hands on the steering wheel”.
And while Egan’s senior coaching career may have started off better in terms of wins on the board – Essendon goes into Saturday’s match at 3-4, the Tigers 2-4 – both coaches have the experience to know the big stage of Indigenous Round can bring the best out of either team.
* Photo: Craig McRae (left) and Matthew Egan
Last Modified on 25/05/2016 22:12
