For Matthew Banks, Anzac Day represents the beginning and the end of an inimitable three-game AFL career.
On the Tuesday leading into Anzac Day 1997, Banks was told by the Essendon coach, Kevin Sheedy, that he’d be making his AFL debut in front of a full house at the MCG. His job would be to stand Collingwood’s Sav Rocca, who two years earlier kicked nine goals in the inaugural Anzac Day clash between the two clubs.
“I was big and strong, and he was big and strong, and Essendon didn’t have many people they could play on him” says Banks, now a finance broker working with the mining industry in Perth.
“It was a different week in many ways, but particularly because people wanted to talk to you. I remember turning up at Windy Hill on Thursday night and some journo pulled me aside for a photo in the boxing ring with the gloves on and I missed the start of bloody training.” Banks didn’t know what to do. “It was hilarious. I rolled out late and Sheeds says, ‘where have you been?’ I didn’t know what to expect.”
Banks recalls Sheedy has a man having five different personalities. “You didn’t quite know what personality he had at the time you saw him. I think half of it was just keeping you on your toes.”
One of those personalities was Sheedy the educator, and Banks remembers his coach playing old war vision during the week and talking a lot about those who fought. But unlike many who reach for allegory at this time of year, Sheedy’s purpose was not to draw parallels but to provide perspective.
“Sheeds would say you’re about to run out onto the MCG in front of 90,000 people, but there are hundreds of thousands of people that have done greater things under harsher conditions. It was about perspective, but also what people can get out of themselves – in different situations you can lift the bar. It’s not saying were going to war, it’s simply not.”
Which isn’t to say the game isn’t brutal in its own way. “The two Rocca brothers tried to rough me up before the first bounce and Dean Wallis ran through and laid one of them out,” says Banks. “When that happened, it kind of just brought me down to, ‘yes, it’s just a normal game’. It was helpful because it got the nerves out of my body.”
Should an analogy be drawn to Banks’ game that day, it would not be with a first world war documentary, but a Jane Goodall one. “If you’ve ever seen two gorillas fighting each other, that was us. Just big heavy bodies bashing into each other the whole time.”
It was ugly, but effective. Rocca would only manage two goals for the game and The Australian would name Banks in the best (his mum still has the clipping). “I didn’t really get many possessions, but I just bodied him to try and get him off balance all the time. Every time he’d lead, I’d try to stand in front of him.”
Anzac Day 1997 was up until that point the biggest day of Banks’ life. His parents were sitting in the MCC members and a mate who he’d grown up with prepared a banner that read, “Which Bank? Matt Banks!”
“That day was a thank you to my family,” says Banks. “All the years that your parents have driven you around to training in the dark at Ringwood. Looking at the proud face on my dad, you just remember all that stuff. You just want to play reasonably to thank them for all of that. And now having kids myself and looking back and imagining your child reaching a level when you’re sitting in a stadium like that, I appreciate it in a whole other way.”
The following week, Banks’ senses were numbed when he was sent back to the reserves. “Sheeds tried to teach me a lesson. I think he did that a few times as he didn’t want guys to get ahead of themselves – and back then I had blonde tips and I was 6ft 7in with a fair opinion of myself, like most footballers.”
Banks would play his only other senior game that year at Football Park in Adelaide, where he held Barry Stanfield and Tony Modra goalless. “Modra was too nimble for me, but I was just able to stand in his way and block his run. You wouldn’t be able to do that today.”
Modra was made even more nimble when Banks tore a hamstring. The only upside being that as the least regarded of four who suffered the same fate for Essendon that night, he was sent back on and ordered to stand in the goal square. He was rewarded with the solitary goal of his career.
In the prelude to Anzac Day the following year, Banks was told that if he got through a reserves game at Windy Hill, he’d be back in front of 90,000 people the following week.
“I chipped a bit of bone off my elbow in a collision, but they just strapped it up so there was no way I wasn’t going to play.”
As he did the year before, he stood Sav Rocca, and held him to one goal by half-time. “He kicked another on me early in the third quarter, before I went for a speccy on his shoulders,” says Banks “As I went to down I couldn’t land with my left arm because of the chipped bone, so I dragged my shoulder into the ground and did my AC joint.”
Banks thought the injury would see him miss be two or three weeks, but it was nine and ultimately, a career. Of his moniker as “Sheedy’s Anzac Day specialist”, Banks is self-deprecatingly philosophical. “It’s a laugh… it’s a stat.”
A week or so ago, Banks received a text message from Sheedy. The text included a picture of a slouching Banks with a group of Essendon footballers by a war memorial. Banks is not sure what year the photo was taken, but thinks it may be 1996.
“Andrew Bomford’s straight over the back of my head, Sean Wellman’s just below me, Dustin Fletcher’s over the back right if you’re looking at it front on, Tim Williams is down the front, a guy from Western Australia who I’m not sure played a game, and Justin Blumfield’s on the bottom left.”
Banks says his old coach has got in touch with him more in the last few years. “I think maybe now he’s got a bit more time to spend. He certainly makes an effort and he loves his boys.”
Banks believes that part of Sheedy’s role, now that he’s returned to Essendon, is to try and restore a culture that has taken more than a few hits since he last coached the club in 2007. Sheedy’s message to Banks? “Stand up straight!”
