SCOTT PENDLEBURY IS navigating traffic in Melbourne’s St Kilda when Men’s Health catches up with him. It’s a glorious 31 degrees in mid-February and Pendlebury has been up since the crack of dawn to do some coaching, before returning to his home in Sandringham, to clean the house. Now he’s on his way to do some filming with AFL broadcaster Channel 7.
I’m secretly hoping the traffic is bad today to prolong my time with the Collingwood legend. He describes it as “Melbourne-like, busy”, which is reassuring, at least to me. If you wanted to take the image of Pendlebury, bumper to bumper in bayside traffic and crudely fashion a torturous metaphor around it, the veteran Collingwood star isn’t exactly zooming through mid-morning commuters the way he once cut swathes through the midfield. Instead, he’s calm, measured, picks his spots, as you would expect a 38-year-old entering his 21st season to do.
Of course, in those 21 seasons lie 21 preseasons, an equally jaw dropping accomplishment. Pendlebury has one day left in his training block, then a practice match. Unlike many things in life, preseason training doesn’t get any easier with repetition; in fact, it only gets more gruelling as you age. But doing it with his teammates – united in collective suffering – makes lung-busting intervals in the beating January sun that little bit easier. “It’s been a solid pre-season,” says the Shokz ambassador. “The beauty of team sport is you get to feel that hurt with everyone else.”
Pendlebury knows – better perhaps, than anyone in the history of the game – how important it is to lay down planks of punishment at this time of year to forge a sustainable endurance base, the miles on the track and sessions in the gym fortifying the body for the rigours ahead. “I’ve been able to complete 21 full preseasons,” he says. “So, I find when you do that it gives you a really good chance to have a good season.”
Make no mistake, this could be better than a ‘good’ season for Pendlebury. As any Collingwood fan will happily tell you – probably unprompted – with 425 games under his belt, he’s just eight away from breaking North Melbourne legend Brent ‘Boomer’ Harvey’s record of 432.
What would that mean to Pendlebury, who also holds the record for most disposals (kicks, handpasses, tackles) in the history of the AFL, as well as the most Brownlow votes of any player who hasn’t won the award.
The answer is not as much as you might think. The reason? It relates, in a weird way, to the collective suffering Pendlebury endures each preseason. When you win a premiership with your teammates, you share the glory with them, too.
“My main motivating force is to try and win another premiership,” says Pendlebury. “I was lucky that I did win a premiership relatively quickly [in 2010]. So, I felt the difference between what it feels like to win a premiership versus an All-Australian or Best and Fairest. The feeling you get from team success far outweighs any individual award you could ever win.”
In something of a compounding cycle, premiership success can also help power a preseason. “We’ve got a group of guys who know that feeling [of winning the flag in 2023] and that’s what makes the preseasons fun and the locker room banter and all those things that happen authentically just so much fun. If you happen to get one, it all becomes part of your journey and part of your story.”
And if Pendlebury were to win a third premiership, some 16 years after his first, well, what a story it would be.
GIVEN THE BOY’S own nature of Pendlebury’s AFL career, you might expect that his was a childhood spent dreaming of September glory on the hallowed turf of the MCG, as the mighty black and white army bellowed from the stands.
It wasn’t for a couple of reasons. Pendlebury grew up in Sale in Victoria’s Gippsland region, with similarly sports-mad brothers, the three spending countless hours kicking the Sherrin and playing basketball at the local stadium, just 300 metres or so down the road from their house.
Pendlebury supported Melbourne, rather than the Pies. More importantly, though, his dreams took shape on the hardwood rather than the grassy turf of the MCG. A child of the ’90s when Chicago Bulls star Michael Jordan reigned supreme, Pendlebury was a hoops fanatic, his sights set firmly on one day playing in the NBA. “That was up on the mirror in my room from the age of 12,” he laughs. “I just became hyper focused on basketball. I was obsessed with it.”
By the late ’90s/early 2000s, the Kobe/Shaq Lakers were dominating the NBA on the way to a three-peat. The young Pendlebury shared the Black Mamba’s work ethic, perhaps even his legendary competitive streak. He’d do anything to get better, employing a fitting ‘magpie’-like method to self-improvement.
“I had a lot of idols in basketball and was fascinated about what they did and how they got better,” he says. He recalls a coach telling him that JJ Reddick, now of the LA Lakers, who was at Duke at the time, would shoot a specific number of shots every day from the three-point line and the foul line. “I remember just adopting that within a few days and that became part of my program,” Pendlebury recalls. “I think ever since I’ve just been inquisitive about what the best do, whether it’s in UFC, boxing, obviously basketball, tennis. How they go about it and how they get better.”
Indeed, if the likes of Kobe set the template for the young Pendlebury’s approach to basketball, his AFL career draws parallels with the resume of age-defying hyperbaric-chamber devotee LeBron James – currently putting up respectable numbers in year 23, while holding just about every statistical record in the NBA. The similarities between the two athletes in terms of their longevity and achievements make you wonder why Pendlebury doesn’t have a self-aggrandising nickname like ‘The King’. He’s certainly earned it.
Long before he could even contemplate such trivialities, however, Pendlebury was making basketball rep teams, opening up opportunities to travel and test his skills against some of the best juniors in the world. “I got some really cool opportunities when I was young to play overseas with Australia and see guys from Spain or from Slovenia or USA,” he says. “You get to see guys that are a bit older than you and how good they were.” Revealing something of the sicko competitive streak required to succeed in elite sport, Pendlebury liked what he saw. “I was never intimidated by it,” he says. “It always was a standard that I wanted to get to or chase or if someone was better than me trying to do more work than they could.” Okay, back to that nickname – The White Mamba it is.
By 16, Pendlebury’s hoop dreams were taking shape and he was on one of the primary pathways to realising them: the AIS. NBA stars such as Josh Giddey and Patty Mills, who would follow Pendlebury there the following season, all went through the elite junior program. Pendlebury, though, would last just three weeks in the nation’s capital. So, what happened?
It was perhaps a case of right place, wrong time. Pendlebury was one of the youngest in his class, with many of his peers already finished school and able to focus solely on basketball. He was also a little homesick. He made the difficult decision to leave, a move that put him on a path he couldn’t have foreseen at the time.
“The plan was never to go back and play footy, it was to go back and finish school, keep my basketball training up and come back the following year with all the guys in my age group,” says Pendlebury. “But that’s when the doors switched pretty quickly.”
Those doors Pendlebury refers to were the sliding kind.
The skinny teenage sporting prodigy returned home and trained with his local footy team, the Gippsland Power, where his older brother had been playing the previous two years, along with some of his mates.
In contrast to basketball, which had become “really serious, really quickly”, footy was a bit of fun, he says. “It was more to keep myself busy. I could go with my mates on a Wednesday night on the bus and have a bit of fun and it was such a small commitment compared to what I was used to with basketball. There was no pressure on me, I had no expectation.”
But there’s only so much you can grind against the gears of fate. From training once a week with Gippsland Power, Pendlebury was picked in a practice game, where he did enough to be picked as the 22nd man in round one. “I sort of kept doing just enough to stay in the side and then I started to get comfortable and play well,” he says. The rest is history, though, given Pendlebury’s stature in the game he would come to dominate, it now reads like folklore.
So, what about the other side of that sliding door. In that alternate reality does he join Mills in the NBA and turn out for the Boomers? “I don’t really see it as ‘I would’ve done this’,” Pendlebury says. “You never know what can happen in life.” I can’t see Pendlebury’s face, but I imagine he’s smiling in the busy bayside traffic when he adds, “I think it’s worked out all right for both of us”.
OVER THE COURSE of his illustrious career, Nathan Buckley’s pinpoint passes into the forward line from the right forward flank were so frequent, so textbook, so precise, they kind of blend into one – a statue of Bucks delivering such a pass should perhaps be immortalised in bronze outside Collingwood HQ. But the one he delivered in round 10 against the Brisbane Lions in 2006, sticks out because its recipient in the forward line was a fresh-faced 18-year-old “with a basketball background”, as commentator Tim Lane helpfully points out. The teen takes a strong, uncontested mark 35m out from goal, then turns and with his first kick in the AFL, calmly slots the footy between the sticks. As is custom, teammates, including Buckley, descend upon him with the requisite backslaps and hair ruffles.
If you’re looking for it, you can, once again, detect the invisible hand of fate linking the two great players in a metaphysical passing of the torch from one Collingwood legend – who would later become Pendlebury’s coach – to his heir apparent. That fateful passage of play is all Pendlebury recalls of that first game. “I say to all the draftees when they get their first game, just to take a moment and soak it all in and enjoy it, because it’s so hard to get something you’ve dreamt of since you were 12 years old.”
Pendlebury’s first few years in the league were building blocks. In 2007 he cemented his place in Collingwood’s midfield, averaging 18 disposals a game, as he finished the season second in the NAB Rising Star award, behind Joel Selwood. He would wrack up 26 possessions in that year’s semi-final against the West Coast Eagles in Perth, kicking a crucial goal in extra time.
It’s remarkable looking back, but a testament to Pendlebury’s maturity, that in 2008, at just 20 years of age, he was voted into Collingwood’s five-man leadership group as deputy vice-captain.
Pendlebury remembers feeling apprehensive about assuming a position of responsibility when was he still finding his feet in the league but was reassured after talking to club veteran and captain, Nick Maxwell.
“I remember speaking to Maxie about it, saying ‘I don’t know if I’ve got much to offer’,” he recalls. “But he came back to me and just said, ‘Even the senior guys would love to have you in there, more just to learn and you might see something differently’ [from the rest of us].” Being part of the leadership group, he says, required him to shift his focus solely from his own play to the performance of the entire playing group. “It was a real learning piece for me in those early days,” he says.
Pendlebury’s role in the leadership group was a prelude to him assuming the captaincy – from Maxwell – in 2014. He would hold the role for eight years, until 2022. From the outset he sought to be an advocate for his players.
“I wanted to be a real player’s captain and the voice of the group because sometimes in footy clubs, coaches and players have different views and I just wanted to have a really strong view for the players about what’s best for us,” he says.
He knew walking off the SCG in 2022, that he’d likely played his last game as captain. “I feel like the club was in a better place than when I started,” he says of his reasons for stepping down. “We had a lot of change in 2022 with all our coaching group changing. We had a new president and it felt like we were a really stable club.”
Darcy Moore would take over the reins as Pendlebury sought to offer support when it was needed. “I remember saying to Darcy, ‘Let’s do it your way and I’ll be the first one in behind you, but if you ever need anything, I’m just a phone call away’.”
The Magpies would claim the premiership the next year.
“FIRSTLY, TO ST KILDA, you guys are a hell of a side, so well done. Our boys, this is the best feeling I’ve ever had. Let’s hope there’s a few more to come”. Those were the words spoken by then 22-year-old Pendlebury on the winner’s dais upon winning the Norm Smith medal in the 2010 grand final replay against St Kilda, after the two teams famously tied the week before. The camera pans to Pendlebury’s coach, Mick Malthouse, who nods his head at the mention of more premierships.
There would be at least one, the aforementioned 2023 victory over the Brisbane Lions, some 13 years later, a record span between two flags. Of the Collingwood players who Pendlebury played with back in 2010, only Steele Sidebottom would still be there in 2023. The pair remain, with the chance to make good on Pendlebury’s words and snare “a few more” flags.
“The whole week was crazy, having a draw and then coming back and the way we won the second game was awesome,” says Pendlebury, looking back. “I remember getting told on the ground that I’d won the Norm Smith and being in shock. Mick [Malthouse] was huge on players being able to play well when the stakes were at their highest. I felt like that was another tick from Mick that he trusted me because I’d done that on the biggest stage.”
That day, Pendlebury and his teammates had every reason to believe they might be back on that dais, raising the premiership cup at least once more in the years that followed. The fact that they didn’t return for so long speaks to the difficulty of the feat and explains why players savour – and celebrate it – so fervently.
By all rights, Pendlebury had no business claiming a second flag in 2023, let alone competing for a third now, in 2026. Only his work ethic, competitive drive and commitment to excellence have made an unlikely feat a possibility. He is a player from another time – he rose in MySpace’s heyday and now finds himself playing in an era of AI deep fakes. “I think everyone, when you win one [premiership] quite young, you think you’re going to get another chance,” he says, noting that the Pies did get back to the grand final the following year, where they lost to Geelong. Later, in 2018, they would suffer an excruciating 5-point loss to the West Coast Eagles in one of the all-time great grand finals.
By 2021, the club had entered a rebuilding stage and finished the year second last on the ladder. Pendlebury admits he was beginning to worry that their time had passed. “I was starting to think, Maybe that’s it. You may not get another chance. How lucky are you to just get one. But I was always determined to get more than one. I wanted two, I wanted three, I was greedy. I wouldn’t advise waiting that long, but it was a bloody good feeling, after 13 years, to taste that success again.”
While Pendlebury has naturally slowed down over the years, like Steph Curry in basketball, his is a style of play that’s built to last. He still seems to have all the time in the world to dispose of the footy, often finding himself in space as the pace of the modern game blurs around him – a man out of time.
Inevitably, the talk turns to retirement. It’s kind of silly to ask a player like Pendlebury about his post-footy plans, when his focus is so singularly trained on the year ahead – kind of like asking the parent of a toddler about their plans for Saturday night, when they’re flat out getting through the next hour. “I’m just trying to get through tomorrow’s preseason training day,” Pendlebury says of his future plans.
I try widening the lens a little.
“So, are you taking it season by season?”
I hear a car door opening and voices indicating Pendlebury’s arrived at his destination, and that our time is up.
“I have been for the last six years,” he says, before bidding me farewell.
Is it funny, or ironic, that a player whose career is measured in decades might only be able to contemplate the 24 hours in front of him? Perhaps it would be, if it weren’t so telling.
Scott Pendlebury's pre-season training plan
Monday – Field + Gym (High Load)
Tuesday – Gym Only (Strength Focus)
Wednesday – Field + Gym (Speed/Power Emphasis)
Thursday – Cycling (Aerobic / Recovery Focus)
Friday – Field + Gym (Competitive / Tactical Focus)
Weekend – Light cycle, mobility work, or full rest depending on load.
Cycling sessions are done on Pendlebury’s Giant bike and are typically 45–75 minutes. Depending on the week, they’re either:
• Steady-state aerobic rides (zone 2 focus)
• Interval-based conditioning
• Easy flush rides to promote recovery
SAMPLE FIELD DAY (MON/WED/FRI)
6.30AM – Leave home (after coffee + breakfast)
7AM–7.45AM – Pre-training mobility
8.30AM – Team meeting
9.30 AM–12PM – On-field session
12PM–1:00 PM – Lunch
1PM–2PM – Recovery (physio, sauna, massage, etc.)
2PM–3PM – Gym work
3.30PM – Film + breakdown edits
3.45PM – Head home
Scott Pendlebury's workout/chill-out playlists
The Shokz ambassador is regularly plugged in listening to tunes and podcasts for motivation. He favours the Shokz White OpenFit Pro for its versatility, the OpenRun Pro 2 for running sessions and the OpenDots ONE for chilling out. Here are the tunes and podcasts that put him in the zone
WORKOUT SONGS
• Innerbloom
• Treat You Better
• Billie Jean
• Don’t Stop ’Til You Get Enough
• Power
• Can’t Hold Us
PODCASTS
• The Joe Rogan Experience
• The High Performance Podcast
• The Tim Ferriss Show
WORDS: BEN JHOTY
PHOTOGRAPHY: SAM BISSO
CREATIVE DIRECTION & STYLING: GRANT PEARCE
PRODUCTION DIRECTOR: REBECCA MOORE
GROOMING: LEE MACHIN
FASHION ASSISTANT: PAUL MANIO
VIDEO: JORDAN COLES
