Egan is one of four men being bestowed such status, but he knows he'll be far from the star attraction on the night. Which is somehow appropriate, too.

In a connection with the club now spanning more than five decades and an array of roles, that's pretty much how Egan has always liked it. And why he has played those roles brilliantly.

"It's one of those things you don't expect," he says of the gong. "Maybe if you're John Coleman or Terry Daniher or those sort of people. I've just done the playing bit, the administration bit and the board bit …" He pauses. "Yeah, I guess I've spent most of my life there."

One of the other honourees, Paul Vander Haar, needs little introduction to any football fan older than 30, the "Flying Dutchman" a spectacular high-flying centre half-forward for the Bombers in the 1970s and `80s and a member of the 1984-85 premiership sides.

There's Reg Burgess, a two-time best and fairest winner and member of Essendon's Team of the Century, and Noel Allanson, a former player and long-serving and highly respected treasurer of the club.

Egan played 65 games over seven seasons for the Dons and was part of the 1965 premiership team. He'd later spend 16 years as Essendon football manager and various other roles, and after four years in Sydney with the Swans, return to the club as a director, a role he filled for 19 years until retiring at the end of 2014.

It's an impressive record. But also one of those cases where job descriptions scarcely even begin to tell the full story of someone's influence.

Because for most of that time, Egan has been the consummate behind-the-scenes operator, the eyes and ears of the club, the go-between for players, coaches and administrators, and when Essendon were at their most powerful during the mid-1980s, a more-than-handy straight and occasionally forceful bat to any googlies those pesky media types tried to serve up.

"Fair dinkum?" he asks, genuinely surprised by that last suggestion.  "I wouldn't have thought that. I didn't mind the media guys, blokes like Peter Simunovich, Mike Sheahan, Trevor Grant and Mick Davis, because they used to write the truth. That must just have been the way papers were then. Now they write shit."

Whack. And once again, the metaphorical ball sails to the boundary rope.

Egan certainly got plenty of practice at saying "no" as football manager on behalf of two of the most famous media recluses of the modern era, Essendon centreman Leon Baker, and in the last year Egan worked for the Swans, for the newly arrived Tony Lockett. "He just lobbed and said: 'I don't want to talk to anyone'," Egan chuckles. "You spent half your time saying no for 'Plugger'."

Earlier this year, when Baker made a rare visit to Melbourne for the 30th anniversary of Essendon's back-to-back flag sides of 1984-85, he swore to Egan's media management prowess.

"I said to him, 'Look, if people ask, just say no,' Baker told me. "Then I started going all right, and he'd get more requests and he'd just say no, and I didn't even know about half of them. It just sort of grew."

Younger fans today would ask why a club football manager was even dealing with the media. That's because in those days, the football manager did pretty much everything but coach, and maybe even a bit of that on occasion.

"I think when I started [as an administrator in 1977] there were five people at the club employed full-time. Now it's something like 120," he says. "You did everything, and I really enjoyed the interaction, with the players and everyone else. When he worked for Adidas, 'EJ' [Whitten] would come crashing in every day half-pissed. Stuff like that. It was great."

Indeed, there's not many anecdotes about Essendon of the late '70s and 1980s that don't at some point feature the man who, because of his dark hair and swarthy complexion came to be universally known as "Middy", short for "Midnight".

When Essendon great Tim Watson played his 300th game in 1994, a legion of Bomber greats paid tribute in The Age. Former Bomber coach Barry Davis recalled his first sighting of the 15-year-old, standing alongside Egan at an under-19s practice game.

Watson himself wrote about the day Essendon sought his release from Dimboola. "I'll never forget the excitement I felt on the night Kevin Egan, Ted Fordham and committeeman Barry Keam arrived at home back in 1977."

Former Essendon coach Kevin Sheedy's championing of the cause of Indigenous football has long been heralded, but asked once about the arrival of Michael Long at the club, Sheedy deferred. "The credit has to go to Noel Judkins and Kevin Egan and the club for trying to build a bridge between two cultures," he said. "All I did was say 'yes'."

These were the days when it was the football manager front and centre of most club duties. Like getting players out of tight spots away from the field. And on one occasion, after Phil Carman had been infamously reported for head-butting boundary umpire Graham Carberry at Moorabbin in 1980, in the VFL Tribunal room.

"I was in the tribunal room with him and about halfway through it, Phil's gone: 'F--- this, I'm going, I've had enough. We had to actually hang on to him to keep him there. He would have got life if he'd walked out, I reckon." Not that 16 weeks for the head-butt and four for striking St Kilda's Garry Sidebottom wasn't a fair whack.

Many of Egan's favourite stories emanate from end-of-season trips, and like any faithful club servant, he knows what happens on the trip stays on the trip. Well, except this one about one of his fellow inductees.

"We were in Germany. Vander was a smoker, and he's gone to sleep while he was smoking and burnt all these holes in his doona, so the pub says he's got to pay for it.

"It cost him 300 bucks or something, and they told him: 'It's yours'. So he's carted the f------ thing all over Europe and brought it back with him, this old, burnt doona. Buggered if I know what he did with it, probably gave it to his dog or something."

As football manager, Egan worked side by side with Sheedy for the legend's first 11 years as Essendon coach. In fairness, many of the media "nos" were simply doing the coach's bidding.

Like many who worked with "Sheeds" for an extended period, Egan by the end found it draining. But also like them, he's first to recognise the profound impact the man had on a place that had been in a quiet slumber for the best part of 15 years.

"He was full-on," he says. "He came in and just turned the joint on its head. We worked long hours, but he was pretty good, really. He's a man of a million ideas, and like I've always said, you had to work out which ones were worthwhile and which ones weren't."

Egan finds himself laughing again at another Sheedy memory. "At one stage there, he was trying to get more money into the club, and he said: 'We'll just go to the council and get them to put another dollar on the ratepayers' levies'. I just said: 'Yeah, right, Sheeds, they'd be pretty happy with that, all those people who don't even follow footy'. But that's how he was, just coming up with ideas all the time."

Even as a board member for close to the last two decades, Egan found little respite, particularly over the last couple of years, and Essendon's involvement in the still on-going supplements saga. "Obviously, it was draining, we were having meetings every week," he says. "But that's not why I retired. I just thought it was time to give somebody else a go."

But he hopes past players and genuine football people still continue to have a crack at serving the clubs from the boardroom. "I still reckon you need them. You can't just run a footy club like it's BHP or something."

That was never going to happen while Egan was involved. In an era where AFL football has become increasingly distanced from its fan base and the grassroots of the game, his experience across all facets of Essendon's operation has helped preserve the club's soul.

And in a very happy retirement at Rye on the Mornington Peninsula, Egan continues to mellow. He's even agreeable when told we're going to try to set up a picture. "Yeah, OK," he chuckles. "Just don't try too hard."