FOOTBALL
By TOM HAYES AND LIAM DURKIN
JUST one more game.
Scott Pendlebury will join the exclusive AFL 400 game club this week.
The Collingwood superstar is expected to suit up for game 400 against the old enemy, Carlton on Saturday night.
The game is set to attract a crowd of 90,000 or more, which could be one of the biggest home-and-away crowds of the AFL era.
Pendlebury will become the sixth player to reach 400 AFL games, following Brent Harvey (who played a record 432), Michael Tuck (426), Shaun Burgoyne (407), Kevin Bartlett (403) and Dustin Fletcher (400).
Pendlebury has played his entire AFL career for Collingwood, after being taken at Pick 5 in the 2005 National Draft.
While Sale was his hometown, he spent most of his draft year on Morwell Recreation Reserve representing Gippsland Power.
Pendlebury had given up an AIS basketball scholarship the year before, much to the delight of long time Gippsland Power Manager, Peter Francis.
“He was on our radar for a long time through the under 15s and 16s but he didn’t play as an under 15 or 16, he came in his 17th year,” Francis recalled.
“He went away to the Australian Institute of Sport with our blessing and he came back right at Christmas and gave me a call and said ‘look Pete, remember that discussion we had? I want to follow football’.”
Playing on a wing at Gippsland Power in 2005, Pendlebury would go on to play in the club’s 2005 premiership – still the only Power flag to date.
The side contained an extraordinary list, so much so three of the top five selected in the draft that year were from Gippsland.
Joining Pendlebury was future Collingwood premiership teammate Dale Thomas (Pick 2) and Xavier Ellis (Pick 3), who some feel was robbed of joining Pendlebury as a Norm Smith Medallist.
Despite his Sale connection, he only ever actually played one senior game in the Gippsland League, in Round 18 of the 2005 season for Sale against Warragul.
Given his Power and earlier basketball commitments however, it is easy to see where his time was occupied.
The Pendlebury household was indeed a competitive one, with Scott’s older brother Kristopher and younger brother Ryan both accomplished footballers in their own right.
Kris was training with Essendon at the time his brother was drafted, while Ryan has also played for Collingwood at VFL level.
Ryan played in Sale’s 2012 Gippsland League premiership, and in the Magpies most recent Grand Final in 2022.
Sport was virtually a way of life for the Pendlebury brothers.
The family lived within walking distance of Sale Oval, and parents Bruce and Liza (who still live in Sale) even had keys to the local basketball stadium.
“That was our playground pretty much every day after school,” Kris said.
“There was always a sporting activity or training after school and then obviously the weekends, whether it be basketball down in Melbourne or Sale, or footy, wherever it may be, there wasn’t too many free weekends that’s for sure.
“If I slam dunked a basketball when I was 16, Scott would try and do it when he was 15, or Ryan would try and beat that. If I made this rep team or Scott made this rep team, there was always bragging rights on the line and that always sort of pushed one another to achieve more than the other did or the previous one did.
“Mum and dad did an amazing job driving us around everywhere we needed to go, so they gave us every opportunity that we could have hoped for.”
In the years since being drafted, Pendlebury has virtually done it all and remarkably never seems to play a poor game, something Kris believed came from leaving no stone unturned.
“For him it’s a lifestyle – diet, sleep, hydration, walking in the water at morning and night, vision, watching the footy, who they’re playing next week, it’s literally a lifestyle for him,” he said.
“He’s got a saying that ‘hard work is undefeated’, and it’s so true because he works harder than anyone you’ll ever meet in your life.
“He doesn’t call it a sacrifice he calls it an investment.”
Away from football, his mother said Scott enjoyed spending time with family and tucking into some home cooking.
“His favourite thing is eating, as soon as we have lunch it’s ‘what am I going to have for tea?’ or ‘where are we going to go for tea?’,” Lisa said.
“He stays in close contact with his pals from Sale, he looks after them, for the Grand Final he gets them tickets.”
Perhaps one of the greatest shows of his character came when he helped out an old Sale friend on short notice in 2019.
Having reached the Australia Club Championships, the Sale Sonics under 14 girls basketball team were in need of a team tracksuit.
As coach Jo Crawford-Wynd explained, Pendlebury came to the rescue.
“The expense for us coming from the country travelling to Melbourne every Friday, paying all the accommodation, it was building up and we also couldn’t get custom made tracksuits for such a small order,” she said.
“So I thought I’ll just give him a call and see if he can maybe put me on to somebody, I text Scott and within five minutes he rang me back and said ‘ring this number tomorrow, Puma will do it for you’.
“He doesn’t forget where he comes from, he doesn’t forget the people that helped him along the way.”
