By Nick Creely
Across a life in football that spans over four decades, Shane O’Sullivan often sits back and has to pinch himself to know it’s all been real.
From a passionate youngster born and raised in the football-loving community of Bunyip with his five brothers and two sisters to working closely with some of the VFL/AFL’s most famous names, the man affectionally known as ‘ShaneO’ has seen it all in footy.
it’s been a journey filled with passion, ups and downs, and incredible life-changing stories.
His earliest memories come from his days as a young man watching the mighty Bulldogs down at his home ground.
On reflection, his passion, his love and his zest for football grew legs when watching his local heroes each and every weekend.
“I had a great childhood, and just loved the footy – my brother Gary and I are only a couple of years apart so we just couldn’t get enough,” he told the Gazette.
“We’d race down to footy training (at Bunyip), kick the footy’s back when they were kicking goals, and on match-days I’d go down and look after the players’ wallets and watches. And then I started playing in the under 16s down at Bunyip.
“A couple of weekends in a row I remember playing under 16s and then the reserves and seniors on the same day. I loved it.
“But its funny how things happen – I can’t remember exactly what year it was, the footy season had finished, and we sort of lived on a hill, and we decided to have a hills and flats game at the end of the season, and had a girls game afterwards. This was about 60 years ago.
“So the passion has always been there – when I grew up I had a dream of coaching Bunyip, and playing for Collingwood.
“Bunyip was a just a great place to grow up.”
Last week, the beloved ShaneO was awarded AFL Life Membership after his 41 years of exceptional service to the game, with three decades of that time spent at the Carlton Football Club where he has become an iconic figure in the club’s illustrious history.
“I feel really honoured to have received it, probably as much for my family to be honest,” he said of receiving AFL Life Membership.
“Across 41 years your family do suffer a bit at times because of the places I’ve been to and the fact that I’ve been away a lot.
“It’s hard to believe I’ve got that honour from the best game in the land.”
His contribution within the game has been mighty through some of the greatest eras of football ever seen.
“There are few people in modern football who have experienced such longevity and importantly have done it all with good nature, distinction and class,” Carlton president Mark LoGiudice told the Carlton website.
“Shane is an exceptional person who is well respected and highly regarded across the competition. He always goes above and beyond to help the club and his colleagues in any way he can. He is a true Carlton person and we are thrilled he has received this acknowledgment.”
Shane joined the Blues in 1979 out of country Gippsland, a famous premiership year in which the club defeated Collingwood by five points in the grand final and features one of the most iconic moments in VFL/AFL history – Wayne Harmes slapping the ball from the boundary in the dying moments to Ken Sheldon in the square to win the Blues the match.
He was employed to look after the training schedules for the Seniors, Under 19 and Reserves sides, as well as liase with the Blues’ local and country regions, and detailed just exactly how he landed at Princes Park.
“When I was in Queensland playing, there was a guy called Max Scales and his wife Margot, they were from Melbourne as well, and when I came home, he was GM of Richmond at the time replacing the great Alan Schwab,” he said.
“I was working as a rep and he rang me and told me that there was a job going at Carlton which would suit me – I applied for it, I missed out and they gave it to a guy called Greg Kennedy, he was a Carlton full-forward and a few months in he decided not to do the job.
“So they rang me back, and asked if I was still interested, and I said I’d be there the next day.
“In 1979, I started around Round Two or Three – I remember walking in, and meeting Wes Lofts, he was the guru at Carlton at the time.
“From there I’ve been lucky for 41 years doing something like a hobby, but getting paid for it, and it’s taken me to so many great places.”
And as they say the rest is history.
Shane said it was an absolute thrill to join the club during such a famous year in Carlton history, and felt honoured to be standing alongside revered figures such as Alex Jesaulenko and eventually become part of further success for the club in the following years.
“I felt like in a way in 1979 I just walked into it, but it was an incredible time,” he said.
“There was a massive upheaval at the end of the year which was a bit sad for everyone, but in ’81 and ’82 those premierships under David Parkin were simply incredible years.
“The atmosphere around the club was amazing – in grand final week you’d get 14,000 people coming to watch training.
“It was an amazing group of footballers – we were probably unlucky to not win four in a row to be honest, in 1980 we had some injuries, Percy Jones was coaching and the wrong sort of guys got injured at the completely wrong time.”
After his first year with the Blues as promotions officer, Shane was moved to assistant general manager for three seasons starting in 1981 and was famously the man that brought Carlton’s Team of the Century captain to Princes Park.
A man nicknamed ‘Sticks’.
“One of my jobs, which I still can’t believe I had the opportunity to do was to go recruiting,” he explained.
“I remember the great Wes Lofts said to me one day ‘you need to go out and find us a Royce Hart’, and I went to the Under 16 Championships in Perth and I was watching South Australia, and there was this young kid there called Stephen Kernahan, he was unbelievable.
“I went back to Carlton and said to Wes, ‘I’ve found the next Royce Hart’, and he said to me, ‘Nah, don’t be silly’, but I said, ‘No, I’ve found the next Royce Hart, his name is Stephen Kernahan, but there’s a catch because his Dad is the GM of Glenelg, and South Australians don’t like Victorians’.
“But they are an amazing family – those days if you brought a player interstate, Carlton would pay for his airfares and everything, so Stephen’s Dad, Harry said to me ‘No, we’ll pay our own way, and we’ll come over’. You can’t be much more honourable than that.
“We were lucky enough to sign him, so that’s how he came about – he hasn’t changed one bit, he’s a lovely man, he just loves to sit in the corner with his mates drinking a Crown Lager.”
Shane was perhaps being slightly modest about Kernahan’s recruitment – the legendary centre half-forward would go on to play 251 games for the Blues, captain the 1987 and 1995 premierships, win three best and fairests and was the club’s leading goalkicker 11 times.
He is Carlton’s greatest ever leader and would go on to become president of the club.
It was in 1983 that Shane decided to depart the Blues and take up an opportunity at Footscray as General Manager, and was the leading figure in giving a rookie coach by the name of Mick Malthouse an opportunity to join the club at the age of 31.
Mick’s coaching resume needs no introduction – he has gone on to coach three premierships, two at West Coast and one at Collingwood – after playing in the 1980 premiership with Richmond.
He also reunited with Malthouse when the legendary coach spent 54 games coaching Carlton between 2013 and 2015.
“When I was playing for Caulfield in the VFA I trained with Richmond in the 1978 and 1979 pre-seasons, and Mick and Neil Balme were really good to people like myself who were training and trying to make it on the list,” he said of bringing Mick to Footscray.
“They were always caring, and when I went to Footscray as GM we were looking for a new coach.
“I remember talking to the late Alan Schwab and I said to him ‘we’ve got to get a new coach, and I’m keen to talk to Mick Malthouse’, and he just said, ‘You’re onto a winner there’.
“We were lucky enough to get Mick in 1984, and for him, I guess the rest is history.”
But one of Shane’s biggest challenges across his football journey was accepting the role of Football General Manager for start-up club Brisbane Bears in 1987, and was responsible for assembling the coaching panel and playing list.
He described it as an exciting opportunity and one he will never regret for all that it taught him about life.
“It was sad leaving Footscray when I did, but it was a challenge of starting a team from scratch that was exciting,” he said.
“It was something that probably hadn’t been done for over 100 years – we won six games in the first year, seven and eight in the next two years, so we were on an upward spiral.
“But it angers me that Peter Knights doesn’t get enough credit for what he did as coach for those first three years – he’s another boy from Gippsland, from Longwarry, so I knew him quite well. It was tough going.
“It was a lot of hard work.”
Despite those challenges, Shane said that he met some incredible people in that period of life, and even brought his children into the world up north.
“I look back and it was fantastic really to set a new club up – I remember, I think it was a January, where 60 of us were on a plane who didn’t know each other moving up to Brisbane and into a hotel,” he said.
“And people gradually got houses, and when someone got a new house we’d all go over there for a housewarming.
“I went up there with no children, and came home with three, so it was a good time family-wise.”
But home is where the heart is, and Shane eventually returned to Carlton after a year as Oakleigh senior coach in the VFA, becoming the Blues’ recruiting manager from 1994 to 2004, before spending 2005 to 2018 as Carlton’s football administration manager and now as the spirit of Carlton manager where he handles the past players and life members.
Its fair to say with over three decades at the club, he’s made an iconic name for himself.
He said he still absolutely loves being involved with the footy club.
“I give whatever support the club needs now,” he said.
“I ended up going up to the hubs last season and helping out all the families up there.
“I just love the Blues, and if they need anything, I’m happy to do it – I’m so lucky to still be involved, and be able to work there for so long.”
In 2014, Shane was also awarded the prestigious Jack Titus Service Award for his exemplary work in football over such a long period of time.
The award – named after Richmond legend Jack Titus – is a distinguished honour not lost on him even to this day.
“I was absolutely over the moon when I got it,” he said.
“People like Wes Lofts, and my first boss Keith McKenzie had won the award as well – it’s hard to describe, you have to pinch yourself sometimes.
“I’ve come from a little country Gippsland town, and while I was not good enough to make it playing wise, I was lucky enough to work with some incredible people.
“Jack Titus was just a legend, not just as a player, but an administrator – it’s incredible, I’m very lucky.”
The newly anointed AFL Life Member has seen some remarkable footballers up close across four decades, but can he narrow down who the best player he’s ever seen is?
“(Stephen) Kernahan is up there, Kenny Hunter was an amazing player, and Doug Hawkins, he was as good as you’ll ever see,” he said.
“In my time at Footscray, I’ve never seen a bloke (Hawkins) that could be in a circle of 10 blokes and still find a way out. He was amazing.
“There’s Bruce Doull, I’ve been lucky enough to work with him, and Juddy (Chris Judd) was incredible.
“But I think the best player I’ve ever seen is Polly Farmer – I wasn’t a Geelong supporter growing up, I was Collingwood, but I remember when I was young this great Indigenous footballer handballed the ball 30-odd metres to Billy Goggin one day, and I couldn’t get over how he could do that.
“There’s so many in different eras – Geoff Raines at Richmond and Brisbane, Brad Hardie were terrific footballers, but Polly is the one that stands out.”
From a country boy hailing from Bunyip to overseeing some of the most famous periods in football history, it’s been a journey worth celebrating.
It’s truly been a remarkable life spent in football.
