As the 40^th anniversary of Carlton’s hard-won contest with Collingwood in the 1979 Grand Final nears, Shane O’Sullivan has revealed how he was dramatically forced into making a coach’s call with only a few minutes left on the clock and the game in the balance on that last Saturday in September.

O’Sullivan, at the time in his first year with the club as Promotions Officer, revealed that with the then Captain-Coach Alex Jesaulenko off the field and out of the game with a severely sprained left ankle - and following a breakdown in communication with the Chairman of Selectors Wes Lofts and members of the match committee Kevin Hall and Sergio Silvagni - he was forced to make the vital call to get Ken Sheldon back into the fray and onto the ground.

O’Sullivan felt compelled to activate Sheldon amid the mayhem moments after Collingwood’s Rene Kink goaled on the run to get his team to within four points of the Blues late in the final quarter. From the ensuing centre bounce, Kink’s teammate Ricky Barham fed off a handball to the running Stan Magro, who thumped the ball forward to the Punt Road end.

There Jesaulenko, running the same way as the ball, fisted the footy over the line to thwart Collingwood forward Craig Davis’s marking attempt. 

In the process, Jesaulenko landed heavily, catching Rod Austin’s boot and severely rolling his ankle. 

Within seconds, two trainers were on the scene – one of them the former Carlton player Graham McColl who instinctively wielded the red towel. 

As McColl recalled: “I remember waving to the other side of the ground to indicate that he (Jesaulenko) was not a goer”.

Wayne Harmes is congratulated after being named the inaugural Norm Smith Medallist. (Photo: AFL Media)

Play continued, as a grimacing Jesaulenko was ferried from the field and into the dressing rooms by the trainers, with the support of the Carlton club doctor Richard Ward.

By then, the Blues were one short and had to find a replacement for Jesaulenko, who also just happened to be the captain-coach.

Enter O’Sullivan, then stationed in the dugout, who turned to Sheldon and told him to get back on, remembering that the two-man interchange system had been introduced the previous year.

“(When) ‘Jezza’ got injured, I’m pretty sure it was his ankle, he was in a pretty bad way,” O’Sullivan explained on a recent episode of The Two Tones podcast

“I’ve rung (Chairman of Selectors) Wes Lofts on the phone, but they (the match committeemen) wouldn’t pick up for about a minute because they (Lofts and everyone else in the box) were yelling and screaming.

“Anyway they finally listened to me and I said ‘We’ve put Kenny Sheldon on’, to which Wes replied ‘What are you doing that for?’. I said ‘Well Jezza’s off the ground and up the race’, but they missed it because they were obviously following the ball.”

Sheldon, when contacted, said that while he could not recall any verbal exchange with O’Sullivan at the time, nor remember being benched, both scenarios were possible.

Regardless, history records that he found himself on the end of that famous Wayne Harmes kick, run, lunge and thump to boot the sealer in Carlton’s 11.16 (82) – 11.11 (77) win.

That O’Sullivan was pivotal in affecting the play cannot be underestimated.

As he said: “We just had to put someone on basically . . . and I can always feel that I contributed something to the day anyway”.

“It was a good move,” said O’Sullivan.