Screaming in the Breeze for my Boyhood Hero

Well shit, it’s been a minute. Has anything of note happened since I last posted…*checks notes…New York win their first chip in 53 years*…yeah right, I’ll get to that later because if the Knicks can do it, Essendon can...nah I won’t even start that nonsense.

For now, and this will tell you how long this has been circulating my mind rent free, I wanted to talk about a topic very close to my heart from something a dear friend of mine said to me a couple months back.

Davey boy, this one is for you.

Anzac Day 2026. Essendon vs Collingwood. Essendon lose – no real shocker there – and absolutely phoned it in and rolled over after half time – somehow even less shocking than the loss in the first place – and Scott Pendlebury deservedly wins his 2nd? (4th? Who cares, fuck Collingwood) Anzac Day medal after playing the role of adult beating up on small children.

Davey boy simply writes “well it’s official now – Pendles is better than James Hird”

Now even though I wouldn’t say I was in grief, I did go through some of the stages that grief entails. Anger…mainly anger…ok entirely anger. Pigs fucking arse Davey.

Now let me cook.

Despite my previous comments, I do respect what Scott Pendlebury has achieved on a football field and admire his longevity. Would I have enjoyed it more if he were wearing a different jumper, we’ll never know, but I’d be guessing Yes is the very short price favourite. He’s played the same way forever, just sometimes after he’s been listening to too much reggae and decides to have dreadlocks. He’s always calm and calculated. He’s always seemingly had more time to operate in a world where time is a fairly finite concept. If a footy game goes for 120 minutes, it’s like he always has 140 minutes to achieve what he needs to do. He has a cheat code for time that I’ve never seen anyone else even have the start of the program for.

And yet, I wholeheartedly believe that James Hird is on another plane entirely. Longevity, no (we’ll get to that), but at the absolute peak, there is no one on this planet I would choose over him to go into battle with on a football oval.

You can tell James Hird was put on this earth to play AFL football. I don’t watch as much footy these days (thanks kids), but when I was younger, I lived and breathed it. I would consume as much footy as I could lay my eyes on, and the one constant was that Hird always stood out. I say he was born with a football in his hands because no one I watched knew where that odd shaped football was going better than him. You could see in his game that growing up, he was ALWAYS kicking a footy, and anyone who has kicked the footy by themselves knows it when they see it, he spent his youth studying the bounce of that ball. Every drop punt, every boomerang, every torp, every shank. He kicked them all up, and he pinpointed where the bounce was heading from the fall of the ball with almost Will Hunting type precision. He was better than so many other purely from having a football brain, and an obvious love for the game, which resonated with me so much.

One of the things I love even now, and I notice it because I’m exactly the same, is that he is most comfortable with a football in his hands. The world seems to slow down and relax when you have a Sherrin in your hands. You can take a bounce, or give yourself a couple little handballs. I watched him in person walk onto the MCG for a damn 20-year premiership reunion in his shirt, tie, slacks, dress shoes and an overcoat…holding a footy. He was born to play.

The thing that made James Hird James Hird was the unhinged need, not want, need to win the football. In an era of Michael Vosses, Nathan Buckleys, Plugger Locketts, Byron Picketts, if you throw a ball into the middle and say we need to win that footy, I’m taking James Hird over anyone. He had the pure skill, sure, but what he had on top of that was the sheer will, determination, and absolute blind courage that inspired an entire club to be better. So many other guys in the league were brutes. They were ball winners, and they were doing it by force and intimidation. They knew that they had so many players beaten before the contest even started purely from the way they played. These guys also looked the part to play that way. Big muscles and buzz cuts. That’s what was so good about Hird. He’d roll into a game, those blonde locks flying, probably in a long sleeve top that was damn near sacrilege in those days, and he would out-determine, out-work and almost embarrass every single one of those brutes.

I feel like Max Kellerman right now, fate of the universe on the line, the Martians have the death beam pointed at earth, you better get that fucking ball, I WANT JAMES HIRD.

Side note – while it was an insane thing to say at the time, I kind of get the Iguodala call. He was born for those defining moments.

The thing about James Hird was that while the skill oozed out of him, that wasn’t even his defining trait. Courage and leadership are what defined him most.

The reason he doesn’t have the longevity on Scott Pendlebury is because he had the type of injuries in his younger years that would probably be eliminated in today’s game with the miracle of modern sports science.

From 1991 to 1999 he played 110 games from a possible 213 from serious hip and feet injuries, which threatened his career in terms of being delisted (until Sheeds stepped in) and purely through retirement from not being able to get the body right. Just above a 50% clip. The mental toughness that it would take during that time to get back up and go again would be monumental. Through the setbacks and dark hours, through all the hours that no one sees, the man managed to climb back from absolute despair to go again and again, then again and again.

The skill was never in question. In those 110 games, he had a day flag, 2 night flags, a Brownlow, 2 All Australian nods, 3 Essendon B&F’s and was their leading goal kicker in 95 and 96. Not bad bang for buck in my eyes.

But after all that came in the first 9 years of his career, the 10th brought the Coup de Grâce. The 2000 Essendon team is the greatest team to ever set foot on a football field. 24 of 25 games won, 1 loss by 11 points, 6 of which came after the final siren, making their average losing margin for the season…11 points. Their average winning margin? 51 points. On average, teams could not get within 8 goals of this team. Up and down that roster at every position were stars. Fletcher, Wellman, Blumfield, Caracella, Solomon, Jason Johnson, Mark Johnson, Misiti, Heffernan, Lucas, Lloyd, Long, Ramanauskas. And the leader of this group of men? James Albert Hird. And you ask any of those guys on the team if anyone else could lead that group, and I dare say it would be a resounding no. This group of guys, who were destined for greatness, all knew that there was one guy they would want to lead them in to battle, because they knew that following his lead meant they couldn’t lose.

He was the conductor of the orchestra, but rather than simply standing up the front for all to see, he was in every section playing whatever instrument needed to be played to complete the symphony. The percussion in defence? Hird was right there beating the drums next to Fletch. The strings of the midfield needed a tune up? James was moving into the middle to re-tune. And the brass of the forward line for the final beats? How about 36 goals from 20 games.

He was everywhere, and he was everything. All for the greatest team of all time. I don’t know how much more you can say.

You can mention the horrific face fractures of 2002 courtesy of an errant Mark McVeigh knee. Multiple fractured bones, metal plates inserted into his skull, hospitalised for a week. Most guys would probably call that a season, not Hird. 8 weeks. 8 weeks and a protective helmet and he was back to lead his troops into battle. He won Most Courageous Player that season, but that could have been his award every season, and they simply hand it to second place to share it around.

You can mention the mental fortitude from that West Coast last quarter. Got dragged through the wringer for his Footy Show comments about Scott McLaren. Was the talking point in the lead up to round, was whacked with a $20K fine, and how does he respond? After a relatively quiet 19 touch first three quarters, against an Eagles team led by Ben Cousins, Daniel Kerr and Chris Judd, he comes out in the last quarter and gathers 15 disposals, 6 clearances, 2 goals (including the winner), and one hug I’m sure still keeps that fan warm at night. The AFL listed it as one of the greatest individual quarters of all time. He ended with 34 touches, 8 clearances, 3 goals and zero Brownlow votes. Good job umpires.

This is but a snap shot of James Hird and the career he had.

I’m absolutely certain that when the curtain comes down on Scott Pendlebury’s career, his individual accolades will trump Hird’s, but that’s not the point.

It’s the peak vs the sum.

It’s the Michael Jordan vs LeBron argument.

LeBron will have the all-time lead in so many league stats by the time he’s finished playing it’s ridiculous. He’s probably the smartest player to ever step foot on the hardwood. He’s forgotten more about basketball than I’ll ever know. 5 chips, 4 MVPs, 5 Finals MVPs and the face of the league for 20+ years.

And guess what? He’ll never catch MJ.

You can’t catch lightning in a bottle. It’s something that is so hard to describe (even though I’ve been trying for 1800 words now), but the collective of an entire elongated career will never match the peak of a shorter one. You can never take away a player’s greatness over a shorter period of time, purely from playing longer.

To quote The Castle – It's the vibe and, ah, no that's it. It's the vibe.

The consistency of Scott Pendlebury may never be matched, but the greatness of James Hird will absolutely never be met.