In the immediate aftermath of last year’s grand final, Scott Pendlebury, who can hear a game’s heartbeat and whose final term had helped secure the premiership, was calmly computing the past few hours.
For most sportspeople, over analysing and overthinking is an impediment. But he was running through the micro and macro moments, the little tactical wins, the patterns of the day. He remembered everything. He had to remind himself that it was OK to celebrate.
Pendlebury, who plays his 400th game on Saturday night, has legitimate claims to be the greatest-ever Collingwood player.
Few have been better suited to the long grind of a footy season. Few have been better placed temperamentally to handle the ups and downs of a game, a season, a coaching tenure, an industry quick to judge and write off.
He’s stood above all that. In good times and bad, in glory years and in lean times, his temperament and his output have never deviated.
Few footballers have been so present, so adept at tracking the ball, at bobbing and flowing within the tides of a game. Every tagger assigned to him has ended up saying a variation of the same thing – physically he wouldn’t work them over the way many champion midfielders would. But mentally, they were annihilated. Playing on him was a three-hour migraine.
There has never been anything physically imposing about him. There has never been a signature highlight – a mark or goal of the year contender.
There haven’t been too many games that he’s completely ripped to shreds. Instead, what stands out is the economy of him and his game.
Nothing is wasted and everything is measured – time, space, disposals, thoughts and words. Few have had a better grasp of geometry of the entire football field, but also of the five-metre space where contests are won and champions are made.
