As an assistant coach at St Kilda in 2006, I was taken aback.

Entering a round 14 clash with Collingwood, the focus at match committee had been on limiting the impact of in-form Magpies onballer Shane O’Bree.

We sent Stephen Powell out to do the job on O’Bree, but hadn’t planned for another Collingwood forward/midfielder – in just his fifth game – to get off the chain.

His name was Scott Pendlebury.

Wearing the No. 16 jumper, this lean and rangy 18-year-old found space with ease that day and helped himself to 15 disposals and 12 marks.

Our Saints powered to a 59-point win, but I remember that game as the moment I knew Pendlebury was going to be a star for a very long time.

“I remember that game, too,” former St Kilda midfielder Luke Ball said this week.

“Even late in that game when we had them covered, I remember trying to track him (Pendlebury) from half-back and he just didn’t stop moving. It was just perpetual motion.

“He’s not the explosive sort of player, but he can seriously motor and travel at speed, at a good clip, for a long period of time.”

Selected at No. 5 in the 2005 national draft, Pendlebury was one of two prized picks for the Magpies that year after Dale Thomas at No.2.

Thomas had more flashy brilliance about him and could impact games in a short period of time, but you could quickly see that Pendlebury had an unmatched ability to find space and consistently win the footy in damaging areas.

LEARNING FROM THE BEST

My son, Thomas, was born in 2007 and I soon had him wearing a No. 10 jumper – which Pendlebury changed to that year.

When Thomas was as young as four or five, I told him to keep a close eye on Pendlebury when we would be watching Collingwood games in the lounge room at home.

As Thomas grew older, I’d use Foxtel IQ to pause matches and help educate him about what Pendlebury was doing around stoppages and what made him so good.

During my playing days at Collingwood, Peter Daicos once told me that being able to slow the game down around you was a trait that you had to have if you wanted to be a star.

You had to have composure and poise with ball in hand, before correctly picking the best option for your team.

Pendlebury does that like few others the game has ever seen.

His on-field abilities have a lot to do with his off-field workrate and desire to continually improve himself.

“What separated him was his attention to detail and desire to get absolutely everything right, almost to the point of OCD,” former Collingwood captain Nick Maxwell said.

“The way that he ate, the way that he prepared his body, the way that he trained, the way that he did weights. He wanted to do absolutely everything right to get the best out of himself.”

NEVER CONTENT

In 2010, Collingwood and St Kilda fought out a drawn grand final.

Leading into that match, Pendlebury battled a gastro-like illness which resulted in him losing 6kg and having a poor game by his lofty standards.

The then 22-year-old logged just five kicks and one clearance among 19 disposals for the day.

In the replay the following week, he recorded 29 disposals, 11 tackles and six clearances to edge out Steele Sidebottom to win the Norm Smith Medal as best-on-ground.

The efforts – offensively and defensively – helped Collingwood to a 56-point win over the Saints.

“He was crook the week before, so I know he was smarting from that performance in the draw because he wasn’t anywhere near his best,” said Ball, who by then had joined Collingwood and was a premiership teammate of Pendlebury.

That inner-drive to produce his best every single week has typified Pendlebury’s career.

He is never satisfied and always wanted to be better.

“In big games, you could just count on him,” Ball said.

“You knew he was going to deliver in some way. He dealt with tags, dealt with all sorts of attention. He was underrated for his toughness, I reckon, and his ability to play with injury.

“You could probably count the number of bad games he’s played in 400 on one hand, where he hasn’t had some sort of impact on the game.”

LEADING FROM THE FRONT

In Pendlebury’s first couple of years at Collingwood, he and Maxwell would take an after-dark walk along Williamstown Beach two or three times a week to keep the legs going and chew the fat.

Maxwell went on to serve as the Magpies’ captain from 2009-13 and the routine suddenly returned one night as Pendlebury sought leadership advice before he took the reins in 2014.

“It came full circle where we just had my first child and obviously your night is changing, you’re doing feeding and bathing and all that,” Maxwell said.

“Then I finally sat down on the couch and I got a message from him saying, ‘Beach in 10 minutes, let’s go’”.

Maxwell got up from the couch and went on the walk, where he passed on some words of wisdom.

“Once he started to establish himself as a player, it was sort of grabbing him and going, ‘Righto, now you’ve done that for yourself, how can you drag others with you?” Maxwell said.

“We just started with the little points of, if you’re doing weights, grab one of the younger players to do weights with you so they can see the intensity you do with that, how you do it. If you’re doing recovery, what do you do? It was more of a stepping stone to focus on the young guys first and then as you go that changes and then the older players start to go, ‘Sh--, this guy’s a real leader, he can help us’.”

Maxwell played one more year without the ‘C’ next to his name, under a player who would become Collingwood’s longest-serving captain.

Pendlebury served nine years and 206 games in the role from 2014-22.

“He wouldn’t come down and ask, ‘Why you did seven reps on the bench press instead of eight?’” former teammate Dane Swan said.

“He was very relaxed as captain, but obviously he led by example. In my time, he’s clearly the most professional player I’ve seen. He’s not just clogging up the list by holding on to 400 games. Weirdly enough, he’s still making an impact week-in, week-out.”

THE MISSING PIECE

Swan isn’t afraid to publicly throw some dirt at former teammates.

But when it comes to Pendlebury, the worst thing he can say about him is that he is “a tight-arse”.

“He’s gone above and beyond making sure he’s done everything right for so long,” Swan said.

“He’s probably got the deepest, darkest secrets of us all.”

Swan and Pendlebury were a dynamic combination in Collingwood’s midfield during the club’s successful period from 2009-12.

Swan won the Brownlow Medal in 2011 and Pendlebury finished equal-fourth in the count that year.

“It was great because sometimes he’d take the tag,” Swan said.

“It’s always good going out in the middle and seeing them go over to Scott and you’d go, ‘You beauty, I’m going to get on my own today and it’s going to be a fill-up for me’. But we’d work together to help each other out and block and move and get the ball into each other’s hands as much as we could.”

Unlike Swan, Pendlebury hasn’t won a Brownlow Medal.

It’s the one thing missing from a football resume that otherwise has it all – including two premierships, six All-Australian jackets and five best-and-fairest awards.

But that won’t define Pendlebury’s career.

Leigh Matthews, Gary Ablett Snr and Wayne Carey never won Brownlow Medals, either.

Remarkably, Pendlebury also sits fifth on the all-time career vote’s leaderboard – with possibly more to come.

Across the first 18 seasons of his career, he has polled 221 Brownlow Medal votes – an average of 12.3 a season.

AN ELUSIVE CLUB

I still rate Peter Daicos as the best Collingwood player I’ve seen.

I’ll never forget the 97 goals he kicked in our premiership year in 1990.

But there’s no doubt that Pendlebury has been the best Magpies player of the past 20 years.

He sees options others don’t, he’s an on-field organiser, he steps up in big games and big moments and his professionalism has got him to 400 games – along with his passion.

“He loves it,” Swan said. “You couldn’t do what he’s done for that long if you didn’t enjoy it.”

Pendlebury becomes just the sixth player to reach 400 VFL/AFL games.

North Melbourne legend Brent Harvey tops that list with 432 matches and spent years playing against Pendlebury.

“You get him off the field and he’s this nice guy. But you get him on the field and he’s a competitive beast,” Harvey said. “Like most good players, I think he’s got that switch that he can flick.”

Few can talk to the discipline it takes to reach such a milestone like Harvey, who sees elements of himself in Pendlebury.

“I think it (the discipline) came naturally to me and from afar it looks like it comes naturally to Scotty as well, the way he prepares,” he said.

“They all say, ‘You make your own luck’. Certainly the way you prepare helps you later on in life and he’s 36 now, so he’s been able to play at a great level for a long period of time.”

MANAGING THE MILESTONE

Collingwood’s season is on the line against Carlton at the MCG on Saturday night and Pendlebury will have a key role to play.

After a big week, he’ll need to be selfless and limit the impact of Carlton captain Patrick Cripps around stoppages if the Magpies are to celebrate his milestone in style.

Harvey’s 400-game milestone arrived in 2015, with the Kangaroos belting the Brisbane Lions following an exhausting week.

“I went out for dinner one night during the week and I had four interviews while I was sitting at the table with the family,” Harvey said.

“You get to the end of the week and you just need that big deep breath.

“The best thing that I loved about it was being able to run out with my kids and I’m sure Scotty will be the same. But at the end of the day, he won’t have a fond memory of it if they don’t win, I don’t think. It will still be huge. It will be an amazing milestone. But when you win, it just makes everything worthwhile.”

This might be Pendlebury’s last major milestone, but he’s set to go around for what is likely to be one last campaign in 2025.

After that, he won’t be lost to the game, though.

A coaching career awaits one of footy’s modern greats.

But first of all, Pendles and his teammates have a game of footy to win against their arch rival Carlton.

Beating them in his 400th game … it wouldn’t get any better than that.