May 21, 2026 — 3:30pmScott Pendlebury wasn’t invited to the draft. The AFL officials making the invitation list, after talking to the clubs’ recruiters, didn’t think there was a chance the kid from Sale would be any danger of having his name called out in the top 10.So Pendlebury was not in the room at the Docklands stadium then known as Telstra Dome when Collingwood, to the surprise of many, called his name at No.5. Pendlebury is the only player drafted in 2005 still playing and will break the games record on Saturday.Portrait of the artist as a young man: Scott Pendlebury in 2012.Getty Images, digitally tintedPendlebury has played for so long that Telstra Dome is now on its third name. Geelong’s home ground at Kardinia Park is on its fourth, though Pendlebury’s Magpies never played there.On the eve of his record-breaking game, we talked to the recruiter who saw him play and saw more in him as an 18-year-old than others; the teammate from up the road in Drouin who was drafted three places earlier than him to the Magpies; and the coach who guided his formative AFL years, and made him into a premiership player.Pendlebury playing for Gippsland Power in the 2005 TAC Cup grand final.Getty ImagesThe recruiterDerek Hine was in his second year as head recruiter at Collingwood when the club had bottomed out and received a priority pick. They thus had picks two and five in the 2005 draft.At the time, Pendlebury was not considered by many recruiters to be worthy of going anywhere near the top five players in the draft, if not the top 15 players.“We put a lot of work into Marc Murphy who went at one. We had a high level of confidence we could get Dale Thomas at three, but Scott was never bracketed anywhere near that by other clubs. He was bracketed by most to be an end-of-first-round pick and at pick two everyone expected Xavier Ellis. I think it was universally agreed Xavier Ellis was the next best player after Marc Murphy.“We took Dale [instead of Ellis, who went at No.3 to Hawthorn], Josh Kennedy went next to Carlton, and we took Scott at five.“I remember talking to Mick [Malthouse] and saying we would take Dale and [then] said we will be taking Scott at five, but he is not ranked at five, but Mick gave us all the confidence to back ourselves and pick him.”Collingwood had Pendlebury on a par with Thomas for players they wanted, but knew if they called his name first at pick two then Thomas might not still be there at pick five.They were sure Pendlebury would be there if they called Thomas out first. One veteran recruiter at the time, whom we won’t name to protect his subsequent embarrassment, scoffed at Collingwood having stuffed the draft by picking Pendlebury.“What you see is what you get with Scott. Go back and look at vision and back then he is doing what he is doing now. He was never quick but his ability to find the ball was just elite,” Hine said.The teammateDale Thomas, now long retired and an expert commentator with Seven, arrived in the game with Pendlebury.“We played at Gippy Power together. He was almost the player he is now but just in a really raw version. The ability still to put the ball out which obviously is a transfer from basketball and sort of have everyone pause and look at it. Like you see the snake charmers with their recorders and the cobras just sit there.Dale Thomas with Pendlebury in the 2010 grand final parade.Vince Caligiuri“Those were the things that when you are a younger kid and you are playing in the talent squads, you are like, ‘Wow that bloke has got something special’. His ability to find the footy is something he has not lost over time.“It was good to be drafted together. We both lived together at the back of Greg Swann’s house in Williamstown for the first couple of months in the poolside cabana. Which was nice to have your first weeks and months into Christmas with someone you knew.“We were both just very excitable kids.“He must have got a lift to Drouin from Sale because I drove him to Melbourne. It was the Sunday before we both went into the club on Monday and we both got calls from Nathan Buckley and Scotty Burns and these guys when we were in the car together. You hang up and go, ‘Holy shit this is it. It’s real’.“He got glandular fever the other side of Christmas in our first year and that set him back a fair way. We didn’t see him until the midway point of the year and after that, we haven’t seen him out since.“When we got drafted 20 odd years go now there was a real pecking order and respect was something you earned. And that was something the large majority of that draft group were prepared to do in terms of your James Clements, Paul Licurias, Brodie Hollands, these players who earned it not only on field but off the field in the weights room.“That was one thing Pendles already had a really good grasp through the AIS and basketball, the levels of professionalism that certainly I was not producing as an 18-year-old who played TAC Cup, played for Drouin and then had half a dozen stubbies on the hill.“We have both had some questionable dos [haircuts]. He had the dreads, but he was dominant when he got them, I think he won an Anzac Medal with them, though he won an Anzac Medal with most haircuts.“He has always been a pro, always looking for ways to get better, and with that innate ability to make time stand still because he has never been fast. He is a good runner without being a freak, he has used his strengths and his smarts to make it look like he is as quick as anyone else.“I remember speaking to him spoke to him before a finals series for Channel Seven and talking about when Craig McRae came into the club and the nerves and the uncertainty he had about being 30 or north thereof, and what usually that means, and how much he was reassured instantly by ‘Fly’ that he was there to make sure he could play the best footy for as long as possible.“There was almost a time before the [2023] flag where he was in the side but not taking up one of the better positions, if that makes sense.“He was tried in the forward line, he was tried wing, half-back, whereas ‘Fly’ has certainly got the best out of him by making sure he was playing in the best position possible.“I remember the one cook that he got, or I gave him. Pretty sure it was a prelim final, and I got a Hawthorn player holding the ball in the forward pocket, and he took the advantage and half duffed it, but thankfully Chris Dawes took a contested marked just before the goal line.“I reckon it was the only time he has done something close to undisciplined that was going to have ramifications, which over 433 games isn’t bad.”Coach Mick Malthouse puts Luke Ball (left) and Scott Pendlebury through their paces at a training session in 2011.Sebastian CostanzoThe coachMick Malthouse was Pendlebury’s first coach.“He had a very quick brain, but he wasn’t fast. I did not think he had a lot of penetration in his kicking, so I gave him a chance to work on his kicking.“I put him inside to be where the ball was and feed it out and his kicking got better, and he got stronger. He had to work hard to get another 10 metres in his kicking.“Because you are the senior coach when a player succeeds the accolades go to you, but the facts are that we had a very good system in place that was able to give these blokes the opportunities to be good footballers, and I would like to think we gave most players the chance to be better as time went on.“He worked hard at his football. He came to Collingwood and you have got Buckley as captain, Burns as vice, Licuria, Clement, Shane Wakelin was an extremely hard worker so there was no get out.“What that did was it endorsed what Scott wanted, not so much what he had to get.“He realised that was the standard. He did not have to find out, ‘What is the standard?’ That was the standard.”Keep up to date with the best AFL coverage in the country. Sign up for the Real Footy newsletter.From our partners