The triple premiership defender hadn’t played one senior AFL match to that stage, but was prepared to walk away from his childhood dreams — purely for financial reasons.

It was 1997 and the 19-year-old was playing reserves footy with the Magpies under Danny Frawley, bringing in $258 per game.

The problem was that his rent was $140 per week.

The remaining $118 was consumed by food, living expenses and public transport from Ashburton – where he was living – which included a 5am train ride to Victoria Park for early-morning gym seasons.

He was even forced to make excuses not to meet his teammates at Don Camillo’s restaurant — because he couldn’t afford to pay his way.

Chasing his footy dream was sending him broke.

While the meagre returns of playing in the seconds only a generation ago seem incongruous with the billion-dollar industry the game has evolved into, Michael told the Sacked podcast: “That’s just the way footy was back then in the semi-professional era,” he said.

“I was actually going into ‘Shawry’s’ office (Collingwood coach Tony Shaw) to tell him I was going to leave and go home.

“It was purely for financial reasons.

“I rang Shawry on the Monday and said: ‘Can I come and see you?’ And he goes: ‘Yeah, come and see me on Wednesday afternoon’.

“I went into his office on Wednesday and he goes: ‘Look, before you say something, I just wanted to say that you’re playing (with the seniors) this weekend’.”

Two days after preparing to tell his coach he was leaving, Michael made his AFL debut in the Friday night prime time slot against reigning premier North Melbourne.

“It was never about not wanting to play, it was just the stress of not having the resources or the finances at that stage,” Michael said.

“Danny just said to them: ‘Hey, we’ve got a fullback who’s playing in the reserves … he’s actually not in bad form, why don’t we play him?’”

EDDIE CANCELLED THE ’99 FOOTY TRIP

Michael’s third senior season proved yet another turning point as the Magpies faced one of their lowest moments.

He played 17 games in 1999 and had some of the most challenging defensive roles in the game.

He was the player charged with trying to stop the game’s most prolific goalkicker Tony Lockett from becoming the first player to kick 1300 career goals.

He did his best but it was like holding back a tide.

Lockett finished that round 10, 1999, game with nine goals and one of those wobbly punts pushed him past Collingwood great Gordon Coventry’s goal tally of 1299.

“Everyone still brings it up,” Michael said. “And I always say, ‘Yeah, but there is an AFL career as well’.

The Magpies “won” the wooden spoon that season and Eddie McGuire, in his first full year as Collingwood president, responded.

“Eddie cancelled the footy trip to Bali,” Michael said. “I won’t say what he said, but he goes, ‘There’s no footy trip this year’.

“We copped it. There was nothing we could do.

“And Mick (Malthouse) was coming in as the new coach. I think he wanted to just set a new standard of where we were going.”

Michael felt sorry for Shaw, who he said was a far better coach than his record suggested.

“He had some fantastic ideas,” he said. “A lot of his ideas were before their time. We were doing some set plays. It was like real NFL-NBA style, and they were fantastic.

“Unfortunately, for Shawry, he just didn’t have the cattle to execute what he wanted to do. He had a few ratbags at the club, which didn’t help him either.”

Michael played one season under Shaw’s replacement and even received a call-up for dinner at the Malthouse house, along with housemate Chris Tarrant.

“He invited Chris and I over to his house for dinner early on,” he said. “It was a bit like when you go out and have cigars, we left the family and went out on to the porch.

“We didn’t have cigars or brandy, but he said, ‘Boys, we’re gonna get there’. Even though we’d come last, I actually believed we’d do it.”

Malthouse was right about the turnaround; it’s just that Michael wouldn’t be there to see it.

‘CALL ME ASAP’

Michael arrived home from a trip to Thailand in late 2000 to find a letter under his door from his manager Ron Joseph.

“There was no taking phones on holidays back then,” Michael said. “(The letter) was from Ron Joseph, saying: ‘CALL ME ASAP’.

“I’m thinking ‘this is probably not good’, because I was really happy at Collingwood and wanted to stay at Collingwood.

“But I understood the nature of the beast. Anyway, I called him up and he said: ‘I’ve got Graeme ‘Gubby’ Allan from Brisbane here … he wants to see you’. I said: ‘That can’t be good’.”

Michael doesn’t believe his friendship with Tarrant – both players partied as hard as they played – had anything to do with the trade that sent him to the Brisbane Lions for Jarrod Molloy.

The Magpies had also been told Michael’s troublesome ankle had three years left at best.

“They traded for Jarrod, so they probably needed a forward,” he said. “They had Simon Prestigiacomo and we were kind of (playing) similar positions.

Was he angry with the Magpies?

“A little … but you quickly realise you have to get on with what you are doing,” he said. “The energy goes to Brisbane.”

THE DICTATOR THE LIONS NEEDED

Michael believes legendary coach Leigh Matthews might have been the “dictator” required to take a cast of personality-strong, ego-driven Brisbane Lions players to three consecutive flags.

“That team had a lot of personalities in there which needed someone to come in and manage that,” Michael said. “He was a fantastic coach, don’t get me wrong, but he was more of a manager.

“You look at some of the biggest rock bands in the world, when there are so many big names there … and in that case there are only four of them (in the bands).

“But Leigh managed to keep 40-plus guys together for a long period of time. He needed to be strong willed to do it. I’m not saying someone else couldn’t have done the job, but he was just perfect for the job.”

Michael played a key role in pushing Brisbane through to the 2001 grand final against Essendon in his first season.

He sensed that the Bombers – once considered almost unbeatable before Matthews’ “If it bleeds, you can kill it” rev-up mid-season – were vulnerable going into the flag decider.

“They were trying to blow us out of the water early and kill our hopes,” he said. “In the third quarter, we started to wrestle it back our way. When Luke Power kicked that goal in the third quarter, I thought, ‘We’ve got this now’.

The kid born in Papua New Guinea who moved to Brisbane with his family as a three-year-old was an AFL premiership player.

It was a massive day for PNG, but he still wonders why the AFL didn’t make more of it.

‘CHEEKY AND DISRESPECTFUL’

Michael, and Brisbane, also won the 2002 flag, but the former Magpie said he found it a little more challenging playing against his ex-teammates.

Still, he did give it to Molloy, the player he was traded for, following the 2002 grand final, which the Lions won in a tight arm-wrestle with the underdog Magpies.

He sent him a cheeky post-game text.

What did it say?

“I just said, ‘Thanks for this’. It was definitely cheeky and a bit disrespectful,” Michael said.

“He (Molloy) responded with, ‘Who’s this?’ Then I said, ‘It’s Mal’. And he responded with, ‘Good on you, you dickhead’.

He didn’t quite feel as sorry for his ex-teammates in 2003, when the Lions overcame a qualifying loss to Collingwood to smash the Magpies in the grand final.

Did the Magpies choke in that 2003 game?

“Leigh always used to say, ‘Get your head and shoulders over the ball, and even if that means it comes at some personal injury or sacrifice, that’s what the team has to do,” Michael said.

“I don’t want to speak ill of the Collingwood players or what happened with them on the day, but that’s what we did.”

TEARS THAT SHOCKED HIM

Brisbane’s quest for a fourth-consecutive premiership in 2004 came unstuck against a fresher, fitter Port Adelaide.

While some have suggested the fact that the Lions had to play a preliminary final at the MCG – despite qualifying for a Gabba clash – cost them the flag, Michael doesn’t subscribe to that theory.

In hindsight, he believes the Lions were cooked in a similar way to Essendon in 2001. But the loss hit him hard.

“That (loss) kept me up for a while,” he said. “I’d think about it easily 10 years after it,” he said. “It was quite strange.

“I came into the rooms disappointed. There was no sense of tears coming. But it was only when I saw my family, when they came into the rooms, that I just started crying.

“I felt like I had let them down. They had flown down to Melbourne to watch me play and we had performed like that.

RIEWOLDT v RUTHLESS LIONS

When Nick Riewoldt came off with a broken collarbone during a clash with the Lions in 2005, Michael and teammate Chris Scott had no hesitation running in to bump the young Saint.

Almost 20 years on, Michael said it was just an example of the Lions’ ruthless mindset.

“That’s what I thought I had to do,” he said. “With lots of workplaces now, there are things you can and cannot do. But with that particular team (at that time) we had a ‘win-at-all-costs’ mentality. Whatever it takes.

“Sometimes we did cross the line and I look back on it and I’m probably a bit embarrassed with a couple of things that I’ve done. But at the time, that’s just what we did.”

But even as he speaks now, that competitive streak sits within Michael.

He added with a smile: “I didn’t know that he (Riewoldt) was a big crybaby.

“We crossed paths after it, but we never spoke about it,” Michael said.

“It’s a bit like an ex-girlfriend … you just don’t talk about it.”

FINISHING AT THE BOMBERS

Michael was keen to devote an extra day to his PNG foundation work ahead following the 2006 season. Leigh Matthews had other ideas.

“I actually went into Leigh’s office … and said, ‘I’d like a day off during the week’ and he said: ‘No!’

“I (then) said, ‘I’m thinking about retiring if I can’t do that’ and he said: ‘OK’.

“An hour later, I was in (CEO) Michael Bowers’ office signing my release papers.”

A text from Gary O’Donnell, who was working at Essendon, having worked with Michael at Brisbane, congratulated him on his career.

Michael went overseas on holiday to Thailand and while he was over there he went into an internet cafe to check his emails.

“There was an email (from O’Donnell) saying, ‘Would you come down to Essendon?’ I actually thought they were talking about me as an assistant coach.

“But (O’Donnell) said, ‘No, I don’t want you to be a coach, I want you to play’. I remember saying: ‘I don’t know if Brisbane is going to take this well’.”

Michael ended up playing two seasons with the Bombers, bowing out as a three-club player who ended up playing a collective 238 games.

He knew two months before the end of the 2008 season that he wasn’t going to get a third year with Essendon.

“I called a meeting with (coach Matthew Knights) and said, ‘Am I going to be offered a contract for next year?’ I knew I wasn’t, but I just wanted him to say yes or no.

“He said, ‘No, we won’t be re-signing you’.

“I think I said; ‘Do you mind if I start preparing myself for life after footy’. I really admired him when he said: ‘You can do whatever you want, you don’t even have to come to training’.

“Of course, I still went to training … but I knew what my future was … I got out in front (of the group) and said: ‘I’m retiring’.”

It was a smart decision.

As a retired player, he was presented with a Tag Heuer watch by the Bombers, which he still wears today.

The sacked players missed out on one.