Collingwood is in a tight spot at the MCG and invariably Scott Pendlebury finds himself in the heat of all the action.

He extracts the ball out of congestion, and in a situation where most players lose their mind, he manages to process the spot he’s in perfectly and executes an exit strategy. 

The game is moving at breakneck speed for every player around him, but not for Pendlebury. He is already a couple of steps ahead. 

That this kind of passage of play could be from any the last 20 seasons is a testament to the remarkable consistency Pendlebury has showcased throughout a storied career that sees him on the verge of breaking the AFL’s games record.

Arguably Collingwood’s greatest ever player, Pendlebury displayed his happy knack of being in the right place at the right time before even setting foot on an AFL ground.

Pendlebury was drafted by Collingwood using a priority pick, fifth overall, in the last year of the old priority picks rule in 2005 after the Pies had recorded a grand total of 13 wins across the preceding two seasons. 

Had the AFL’s rules for the 2006 draft applied a year earlier, Pendlebury might well have landed at two of Collingwood’s big Victorian rivals, Essendon or Richmond. 

The Collingwood that Pendlebury arrived at is a stark contrast to the sleek and professional outfit he currently plays on, and he is a major reason why the Pies have become the club they are.

Collingwood felt very much like an afterthought when it came to the AFL’s power structure in the mid-2000s.

As Collingwood’s great Victorian rivals Essendon and Carlton stacked premierships in the 80s and 90s, the Pies had won just a solitary flag in the 46 years leading up to Pendlebury’s arrival.

After punching above its weight to make consecutive grand finals in 2002 and 2003, Collingwood had spectacularly come back down to earth in the two seasons that followed.

The Pies still had Mick Malthouse as coach and Nathan Buckley as captain, but Buckley was 33, and the era was winding to a slow death. 

Pendlebury’s arrival, alongside 2005’s third overall pick Dale Thomas, infused Collingwood with the youth and class it so desperately craved, and the club hasn’t looked back since, even with Pendlebury no longer youthful.

In the 21 years since being drafted by Collingwood, Pendlebury’s career has traversed through roughly five different Magpies eras. 

The first of those came as Collingwood built towards its drought-breaking 2010 premiership with the likes of Pendlebury, Thomas and his long-time running mate, Steele Sidebottom, among the centrepieces. 

Pendlebury was then the bridge to Collingwood’s next era of contention in the late 2010s when the Magpies were pipped to another premiership by Dom Sheed and West Coast in 2018, before losing a heartbreaking prelim to GWS in 2019. 

Stars came and went throughout this period. Dane Swan went from a chubby late draft pick to one of the best midfielders in the competition before a foot injury ended his career.

Dayne Beams went from being a precocious young talent on the 2010 premiership side to being dealt to Brisbane and then returning.

Brodie Grundy came on the scene and blossomed into one of the best ruckmen in the game, signed a monster deal, and then was traded because the deal left the Pies in salary cap hell. 

Even Buckley, the quintessential Collingwood man, came and went, first as a player and then a coach. 

The metronomic Pendlebury stayed constant as ever through it all as Collingwood’s skipper.

It is somewhat unfortunate for Pendlebury that he narrowly missed out on becoming a premiership captain at either end of his eight-year tenure as Magpies skipper.

However, the importance of Pendlebury’s graft on those average Pies teams in the middle of his career cannot be understated, even if it did not immediately yield results. 

Had Pendlebury deserted the Pies in his prime years, as is commonplace nowadays, there is no way Collingwood would become the destination club it currently is. That is why he is one of the most important players in Pies history.

Pendlebury is now in his most recent and likely final Collingwood era, the Nick Daicos era, one that has already yielded the club a premiership, and has every chance of yielding another.

That Collingwood has been able to stay this consistent for this long without ever really dipping for more than a year or two is a testament to Pendlebury’s longevity.

When your best player is this professional and consistent, the entire program has no choice but to follow suit.

Pendlebury’s remarkable consistency has been the strong suit of his entire career, and it is magnified when trying to decide what his best individual season is.

Is it 2013, the year he was named the Player of the Year by the Coaches Association? 

Is it 2011, the year he polled a career-high 24 Brownlow votes and averaged 29.7 disposals per game? 

Is it any one of the other years between 2010 and 2019 when he was a lock for around 27 touches a night while playing more than 20 games a season?

Through it all, Pendlebury has constantly been the man for all occasions for Collingwood over the last two decades. 

When the Pies needed him to scale up early on in his career and become a bona fide midfield star, he was ready.

When he needed to scale down and log halfback minutes to accommodate teammates as he aged, he was able to do that with aplomb too. 

On the big occasions when Collingwood really needed an A+ game out of him, Pendlebury always showed up.

He did it at 22 in his first grand final when the Pies needed him to battle against a high-powered St Kilda midfield, and he did it at 35 in his most recent grand final, when the Pies needed him to dip into the time machine to tackle the Brisbane juggernaut.

The malleability of Pendlebury’s game means it really should not be a surprise that he is going to become the league’s games record holder.

Pendlebury might be a little slower at 38 than he was at 18, but he more or less still plays the same game. Given he’s a man who never relied on athleticism or moments of brilliance, but rather an ageless footy IQ, perhaps we should’ve seen this games record coming. 

As he prepares to chart territory where no man has ever gone in playing game 433, there is no telling where Pendlebury’s story will end.

Will he get to 450 games? You’d be mad to bet against it. 

Getting to 500 is probably a tough ask, unless Pendlebury is willing to go to a younger club and log games as an on-field coach playing halfback for a couple of years. If there is even an inkling of this possibility, he will have at least five clubs blowing up his phone with haste.

However, he has always seen the next move coming before the rest of us.

The chances are high that he’s already got this one plotted out as well.