<span style="font-size:12px;">A good piece by Rohan Connolly on the departure:</span>
Lifetimes of memories and legends depart Windy Hill
New home: Removalists transport the painting When We Played Football at Windy Hill. Photo: Justin McManus
It's been more than 22 years since Essendon played its last game of AFL football at Windy Hill, yet there were still tears in a few eyes when the club last week packed up and moved house to its new administrative and training complex at Tullamarine.
On the field, the Bombers had signed off a 70-year stay with a routine 45-point win over the struggling Brisbane Bears on August 10 1991, before a much-debated shift of home ground to the MCG.
But the small and, for opposition sides, often intimidating venue has continued to be the hub of Essendon's coaching, training and social activities. The departure of the club lock, stock and barrel needed to be marked appropriately.
And that task was left, fittingly, to club elder statesman and former player Jack Jones, who has been conducting tours of the ground for most of the past 20 years.
As the packing of boxes and crates continued apace last Wednesday, the still-sprightly 88-year-old led club staff and a few invited guests on a final waltz around a venue loaded with history.
"It was a bit hard to do," he says. "Things were in a bit of a mess with everything being boxed up for the move." But it was hard to do for more sentimental reasons too.
Jones was privy to most of Windy Hill's most important moments during his 175-game career, which included seven grand finals and three premierships. Much of that time he spent at centre half-forward working at close quarters with the legendary John Coleman. Indeed, Jones was just metres away when Coleman famously suffered his career-ending knee injury in 1954.
"I was at centre half-forward that day," he recalls. "Jack Clarke came out of the centre, I started leading, then I heard Coleman say: 'It's mine, Jona,' and I moved out of the way, because he was vice-captain and marshal of the forward line, and I wanted a game the next week!"
Jones retold that story to the Essendon staff, as he has the thousands who have joined him over the years for the Windy Hill tour, a ground, he's quick to point out, where the club has been based for a dozen of its 16 premiership wins.
"I'd take them to the auditorium where they'd pick the sides and have the player meetings. We'd go down to the medical rooms and the gym, and I'd take them out on the ground and tell them about the grandstands named after [long-time club secretary] Bill Cookson, ■■■■ Reynolds and Allan Hird.
"When James [Allan's grandson] won his Brownlow Medal in 1996, Mark Harvey put a sign over the 'Allan' part and it became the James Hird grandstand for a little while." While it's hard to imagine now, Windy Hill once packed them in like sardines, a record 43,487 turning out to see the Bombers against Collingwood in May 1966.
The fiercely partisan local hordes bayed for opposition blood in the stands at the Napier Street end, or from favourite corners like the fondly named "Cow Shed" on the outer wing, or the sloping terracing next to it at the "School End", behind whose goals the inevitably outnumbered opposition supporters were always tentatively camped.
There they watched some of the finest work of official AFL Hall of Fame Legends such as Coleman, who booted 12 goals there in his senior debut in 1949, ■■■■ Reynolds and Bill Hutchison, and latter-day greats such as Simon Madden, Tim Watson and Terry Daniher.
And they were privy to some of the game's most memorable incidents. There was the infamous "Windy Hill brawl" of May 1974, a half-time spot fire that exploded between the Bombers and Richmond, and featured players, officials, supporters, umpires, police, mounted and on foot, and at one stage a six-year-old boy strolling calmly among a sprawling wild pack near the visiting players' race.
Even in its final year as a league venue, Windy Hill was still the scene of intrigue, with West Coast turning up to find the ground's windsock tied down to make their task as difficult as possible, coach Kevin Sheedy initially shouldering responsibility, the culprit later found to have been club chief executive Roger Hampson.
For so many Essendon fans, Windy Hill has remained a significant place. "A few years ago, there were three big trees they wanted to move to shift the practice wickets for the cricketers off the grounds near the croquet club," says Jones. "They came across all these urns. They had to ring up all the families of people who had been buried there, and moved them down to the other end of the ground."
And there they will stay. As will the social club, a souvenir shop, and for next season, Essendon VFL side's home games. Proof that while the body of the football club has now departed, much of its soul will still remain at the poky little ground on the corner of Napier and Brewster streets.
