Scott Pendlebury will break the VFL/AFL games record on Saturday when he runs out for his 433rd match, the latest milestone in a Collingwood career that has stretched across nearly two decades and carried him from an Australian Institute of Sport basketball prospect to one of the game’s most decorated players.
The 37-year-old has played in five grand finals, including one draw, won two flags, collected a Norm Smith Medal, five best and fairests and earned six All-Australian selections. He arrived at Collingwood in November 2005 after the club took him at pick five in the draft, behind Marc Murphy, Dale Thomas, Xavier Ellis and Josh Kennedy, and made his AFL debut in round 10 of 2006, aged 18 years and 147 days, with his first kick producing a goal after a mark from Nathan Buckley.
Pendlebury’s rise has been shaped as much by adaptation as by talent. He came into the professional game from basketball, and he has said players drafted at the same time as him did not really know how to look after their bodies or themselves in AFL terms because so much was done for them. “The bus picks you up and takes you to training, you get a bag, you get a uniform whereas in basketball if you want to tape your ankles you need to learn to tape your ankles – you don’t have a trainer or any of that stuff,” he said.
That background mattered early at Collingwood, where some senior players first mistook his manner for aloofness before they understood his approach. Pendlebury said he knew the only way to become the best was to put himself in positions where he was no longer the best, which helped shape his first full pre-season before his second season. He chose Shane Licuria as the player he most wanted to tag onto then, after having only nine games under his belt and after overcoming glandular fever in his first pre-season.
The games record arrives against a career that has already given Collingwood a defining modern player, but Pendlebury has made clear he is not done. “And it’s not over yet, not even close,” he said, while also saying he still loves playing and wants to keep going for as long as possible. There is also a view that he may move into senior coaching after he retires, but for now the focus is on Saturday, when his name will move alone to the top of the AFL appearances list.
