AFL finals 2019: Scott Pendlebury — the shock top-five that turned into a 300-game superstar
Scott Pendlebury’s mum was in tears the night before the 2005 National Draft.
But they weren’t tears of happiness. West Coast had called and told her they were going to draft her son at Pick 13 if he was still available.
The then 17-year-old went outside and played basketball with his brother when the phone rang again. This time it was Geelong list guru Stephen Wells. The Cats wanted to use their first pick on Pendlebury at 15.
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While the general consensus was Oakleigh Chargers midfielder Marc Murphy and Gippsland Power pair Dale Thomas and Xavier Ellis were the best prospects in that draft, Pendlebury wasn’t expected to feature anywhere near the pointy end — let alone the first round — so the calls were surprising.
Pendlebury had started the year at the Australian Institute of Sport on a basketball scholarship, before having second thoughts and deciding to give football a proper crack for the first time since he was 12.
Gippsland Power regional manager Peter Francis thought Pendlebury would be selected in the second round after an eye-catching bottom age season. But Collingwood recruiting manager Derek Hine had other plans.
The former fireman had only been in the job a short time when he made a career-defining pick that is still reaping rewards 14 years later.
It was a pick that drew widespread criticism at the time and for most of the next season as the midfielder toiled away at Williamstown in the VFL.
By the time Pendlebury won the 2010 Norm Smith Medal, Hine’s punt was a stroke of genius. But after 299 games, it’s a masterstroke. A gift that keeps giving.
The now 31-year-old will become only the third player in the history of Collingwood Football Club to play 300 matches when he faces Geelong in Friday night’s qualifying final — his 22nd final — at the MCG — only two players (Gordon Coventry and Harry Collier) have played more finals in black and white.
Pendlebury, who will start his ninth finals series as a six-time All-Australian — after earning his first blazer in five years last Wednesday night — a five-time Copeland Trophy winner, a premiership player and the Magpies’ captain, remembers the morning his life changed forever inside his family home in Sale.
“On the morning of the draft we had the old dial up internet and our internet cut out so we didn’t actually hear any of it and then it came back in for round two. My phone blew up at the end of the first round and everyone was saying Pies or Collingwood,” Pendlebury told foxsports.com.au this week.
“I didn’t believe it until I saw it on the screen that I had gone at Pick 5. I think everyone at the time was shocked that I went at Pick 5. Who was this kid? What has he done? Where has he come from? Dekka (Hine) tells me that he copped a fair bit of heat for taking me so high. It turns out that it has been all right.”
Sitting inside the café at the Glasshouse, across the road from where the draft was held that year at the tennis centre, Hine smiles as he recalls the searing heat he received after picking Pendlebury so high.
“It is satisfying (that it has worked out how it has). This business is a bit of a thankless task. Everyone sees the ones that you get wrong and rarely the ones that you get right,” Hine said.
“I was one of the newer recruiting managers in the industry. It was pretty much a closed book at the time. Greg Swann, ‘Balmey’ (Neil Balme) and Mick (Malthouse) really backed me in.
“I just rated him at that pick and that’s where we were going to take him. As we do now, we just put them in a line and cross them out as we go. What you see now is what we saw then. He has always had that special spatial awareness.
“We watched him progress across that year, and he was a little bit unexposed to a certain degree, but we really place his performances in the games that really count at a high level and that was clearly there. Scotty was taken as a 17-year-old, so it was a pretty big call from us.”
Pendlebury isn’t someone who stops to smell the roses. He is the first player from his draft class to reach the 300-game barrier and he will join black and white royalty in Tony Shaw (313 games) and Gordon Coventry (306 games) when he becomes the 90th player in AFL/VFL history to reach the milestone this weekend, in what will be his 194th game at the MCG.
Pendlebury has polled at least 15 votes in each of the past nine Brownlow Medal counts and has polled the equal 12th most votes in AFL/VFL history, alongside three-time winner Bob Skilton. Only Joel Selwood (195) and Brent Harvey (191) have polled more votes than Pendlebury without winning the game’s most prestigious individual accolade.
“I’m not an overly reflective person,” he said.
“I think it is hard when you’re playing because you’re so in the moment. I feel really fortunately that I haven’t had any serious injuries.”
“It does hit home when you come out today and there are only two posters (of 300-game players) and then me as the third in the 127 years of this club being here. It is certainly very cool.”
Hine was the mastermind behind Collingwood’s premiership in 2010 and has picked every player on the club’s current list.
The veteran talent spotter has seen it all, but not many have been as fanatical with their preparation as Pendlebury, perhaps only Magpies coach Nathan Buckley.
“The thing that has been unbelievably impressive with Scotty is the way he prepares. In a lot of ways it mirrors how Nathan was as a player. Scotty hones his craft to an unbelievable level,” Hine said.
“One of the major standout qualities with Scotty is he is just continuing looking at how he can improve on the field or off the field, physically or psychologically. He is just a perfectionist at everything he does.
“We see what he’s doing now in terms of the 300 games, the All-Australians and the best and fairests — he has done it all — but there is so much more to his career to come. He is a real student of excellence and he listens to a lot of people and researches things.”
It is rare for the man who picked you to still be at the club at the end of your career. But that’s the case with Hine and Pendlebury.
And it is something not lost on the Collingwood skipper, who spends time inside Hine’s office before every draft to get a lay of the land.
“It has been cool sharing the journey with him,” he said.
“Even when I started I lived with him for the first few weeks when I came down.
“Every year before the draft I go in and see who they like and try and get them to tell me who they would take if they were there, otherwise they always say they took the best player available. I really like that side of the game.”
The man who makes time stands still will be 32 by the start of next season and could be less than 10 games off Shaw’s club record 313 appearances by the end of this month.
Pendlebury can thank Hine for selecting him, while Hine can thank Pendlebury for proving him right. And Magpie fans can thank them both for 300 games of pure unadulterated class.