When Scott Pendlebury runs out onto Etihad Stadium against the Western Bulldogs on Friday night, he will be playing his 261st game and equalling the number of games played by Collingwood’s greatest legend Jock McHale.
McHale was involved in the club in some capacity from his first game in 1903 until he retired from coaching in 1949 – a career that spanned 47 years and involved nine premierships and – even after that, he played a behind-the-scenes part in the 1953 premiership. An amazingly durable player, he played 191 consecutive games between 1906 and 1917 – a record that stood until 1943.
As coach, he set a record of four premierships in a row – a record that has yet to be equalled. Pendlebury, the current Collingwood captain will join McHale at #6 on the Magpies’ games played list after drawing level with current coach Nathan Buckley last week.
A superbly skilled player, Pendlebury appears to be one of those players who always has plenty of time to assess the situation and deliver the ball near perfectly. The greatest exponent of this I ever saw was Carlton’s Bruce Doull.
An accurate kicker, Pendlebury also features at number 38 on the club’s all-time goal kickers list.
Up at Sydney, Heath Grundy will play his 247th game and overtake Stephen Wright and Mark Bayes and move into the outright eighth position of the Swan’s all-time game players list. Wright and Bayes played together for part of their careers and both won Best and Fairest at the club: Wright in 1985 and 1990 and Bayes in 1989.
Both were also named in Sydney’s Team of the Century.
At Adelaide, Richard Douglas will break into the Top ten game players of all time when he catches Ben Rutten on the weekend. Rutten’s 229 games were played between 2003 and 2014. Nicknamed “Truck”, Rutten belongs to a select group of players that scored goals with their first three kicks in VFL/AFL football.
Born and bred in Adelaide, he was recruited from the West Adelaide club and made the all-Australian team in 2005.
A number of significant moves are happening at Geelong where Joel Sellwood will equal the games performance of Paul Crouch (259 games), Tom Hawkins will move up to join Terry Bright, Tim McGrath and Ben Graham on 219 games and Gary Ablett will match Ken Newland, Bill Brownless and Josh Hunt on 198 games for the cats.
On the AFL all-time list, Brendon Goddard (Essendon/St Kilda) will join Nick Del Santo (St Kilda and North Melbourne) and Simon Black (Brisbane), Luke Hodge (Hawthorn and Brisbane) will move to outright 45th on the list and Jarrad McVeigh (Sydney) will be 56th.
Gary Ablett (Geelong and Gold Coast Suns) will join Scott Thompson (Melbourne and Adelaide) at #57, Kade Simpson (Carlton) will be 86th and Jordan Lewis (Hawthorn/Melbourne) will join Matthew Boyd (Western Bulldogs), Anthony Stevens (North Melbourne) and Darren Milburn (Geelong) who all finished their careers on 293 games and now sit in 91st position.
Conventional milestones will be celebrated by Todd Goldstein (North Melbourne), Shaun Grigg (Carlton and Richmond) who will both bring up 200 games. Sam Mayes (Brisbane), Lachie Whitfield (Greater Western Sydney) and Jordan Murdoch will play their 100th game this round.
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