After announcing his intention to retire at the end of the season, Chris Tarrant's 15-season football odyssey is approaching the end. At best, it has six weeks to run, with the carrot of a premiership still driving him to the finish line.
It's a journey that has taken him from Mildura in north-western Victoria to Collingwood - or Abbotsford, where the club was based at Victoria Park at the time - and then across the other side of the country, to Perth.
Fittingly, as if it was all meant to happen, it brought him back to Collingwood, and to the Westpac Centre, as if he had never left it.
Tarrant leaving on his own terms.
If absence makes the heart grow fonder, as the old adage runs, Tarrant's time with Fremantle only solidified in his mind how much his time in the black and white meant to him. That hadn't always been the case. But maturity and the passage of time transform what places and people mean to individuals.
And when Tarrant returned to Collingwood at the end of 2010 - after four seasons out west - he admitted without guilt that his heart had always belonged to the Magpies.
Whatever way you look at it, Tarrant's 191 games in Collingwood colours will always mean more to him than his 72 games with Fremantle. That's not to say that his time with the Dockers didn't mean anything to him. In a strange way, that time away helped to prolong his AFL career through to 2012.
In a way, Tarrant's pending retirement will bring about the end of an era for the club.
He is the last current Magpie to have played in the 1990s - or the 1900s, for that matter. He is also the last current Collingwood link to playing at Victoria Park, the club's famous former home ground, where he played one match in 1999 - the same year that he played his only match at Waverley Park.
Current Carlton defender Heath Scotland also played in that Victoria Park farewell against Brisbane in the final round of 1999, but he has been with Carlton for much longer than he spent with Collingwood.
Tarrant's fifteen years in football - the facts and figures.
Tarrant has straddled the succeeding generations of Magpies. He was coached by Tony Shaw and played with Shaw's nephews, Heath and Rhyce. His first captain was Nathan Buckley, who also happens to be his last coach.
He played with Collingwood's 1990 premiership players such as Gavin Brown, Damian Monkhorst, Scott Russell, Graham Wright and Gavin Crosisca and in his two stints with the club played with all of the 2010 premiership side.
He was recruited to the Magpies a full year before Eddie McGuire decided to become club president with a plan to drag the club into the 21st century.
Collingwood was all but broke and housed in a much-loved but archaic, rundown suburban home when Tarrant arrived. As he gears himself for his departure, the club has never been better placed in terms of its financial and football operations, with the multi-million dollar redevelopment of the Westpac Centre currently taking place.
And back in 1998, Tarrant's first AFL season, the US was an end-of-season trip destination, not a pre-season high-altitude training camp.
Tarrant's career at Collingwood can be broken down into three periods - the precocious teenager not particularly suited to the glare of the football spotlight; the key forward who had plenty of soaring highs and a few disappointing lows; and finally as the mature, seasoned veteran desperate for a premiership.
Taz's story in photos.
The first came after he was selected as the No.8 pick - and the Magpies' first pick - in the 1997 national draft. Six players remain from the 83 selections made - Tarrant (pick 8), Adam Goodes (43), Matthew Scarlett (Geelong father-son selection, 45), Simon Black (31), Luke Power (5) and Chad Cornes (9).
That roll call of AFL stars has 11 premiership medals between them. Only Tarrant is yet to win one - though his dream lives on in 2012 after playing in three losing Grand Finals (2002-03 and 2011).
Tarrant had to watch on as some of his best mates in Ben Johnson, Alan Didak and Dane Swan, played in the 2010 premiership - not many weeks before he returned to the club after his stint with Fremantle.
Johnson (227 games), Didak (209) and Swan (191 - the same as Tarrant) would want nothing more than helping Tarrant join them as flag winners in 2012.
Tarrant's record stacks up well. Only a dozen other Magpies in history have kicked more goals than he has.
When he joined Collingwood, the club was at a low ebb. That much was certain in his first two years - 1998 (when the club finished 14th) and 1999 (when the Magpies won only their second wooden spoon in the club's history).
Tarrant's first practice match for Collingwood came on February 14, 1998, on a strange day at Princes Park when then Carlton president John Elliott was handing out roses to mark Valentine's Day.
Highlights from his early days.
He kicked a goal, was likened to Essendon's Scott Lucas by one media observer, and ended up breaking his wrist in Collingwood's six-goal loss.
That delayed his official AFL debut, and pushed it back to round three of that year, against the might of the Western Bulldogs, who were then one of the most in-your-face sides in the competition. Again, he kicked a goal, had seven disposals and laid three tackles as the club went down by 34 points.
The Herald Sun said it was a "baptism" of fire for the young forward as the Bulldogs "intimidated the Pies, sucked them in, beat them mentally and physically before stuffing them in a box and burying them."
He was only 17 years and 205 days, and was the youngest player in the competition at the time, but he showed a few sparks in the 11 games of his debut season, particularly late in the year.
In 1999 he played 13 games, with his best effort being four goals in Damian Monkhorst's 200th game against St Kilda at Waverley. On the Thursday before Tony Shaw had announced he would be stepping down as coach at the end of the season.
Down by four goals at half-time, the Magpies fought back strongly, and Tarrant more than played his role, with the Herald Sun saying: he "showed the type of class that (he was) recruited for."
After the game Tarrant did his best to stay out of the media spotlight, but did offer up a few words to waiting reporters. He said: "Winning a game like that from 25 points down against the odds the way we did was very satisfying and certainly my highlight so far."
In that year, Tarrant got to experience playing on Victoria Park in the Magpies' farewell game against Brisbane. He kicked a goal and had 16 touches in his 24th game, but the Magpies' miserable wooden spoon season ended in a 42-point loss.
Tarrant explains his retirement on The Club.
He kicked 28 goals from 19 games in Mick Malthouse's first year as coach in 2000, but only after he had briefly considered quitting the sport to return home to Mildura to be with his family and friends.
Eddie McGuire coaxed him back to Melbourne - and down to Portsea where he threw a barbecue for Tarrant and convinced him that he had to continue with his football.
At the time the president said: "He's making an assessment whether he could be bothered knuckling down over the next 10 years to the rigors of football or whether he'd rather go fishing." Football won out over fishing, and Magpie fans were grateful that it did.
In 2001 Tarrant took one of the marks of the year against Melbourne on a cold, wet day at the MCG on Queen's Birthday. Speaking after his launching over a pack, the forward said: "I led out from the goal square, I think I was about 30m off the play and I just sort of seemed to go up in the air. I wanted to hit the pack as hard as I could. I jumped and I think I got a boost from somewhere."
Incredibly, Tarrant was denied the Mark of the Year by Essendon's Gary Moorcroft who took a once-in-a-lifetime mark over Western Bulldogs Brad Johnson only four weeks later.
But in Tarrant, Collingwood had more than just a high flier. They succeeded in getting a forward capable of kicking goals - he would win the club's goal kicking for five successive years - 2001-2005 (although he was equal with Anthony Rocca in one year).
Tarrant kicked 53 goals in 2001; 38 in 2002; a career high 54 in 2003; and then, oddly enough, 36 in his last three years at Collingwood in that decade - 2004-06.
Watch Tarrant's role in the forgettable - or unforgettable - shampoo advertisement from 2003.
There were some great highs, including a career-best seven goals against Melbourne in 2002, which earned him his first three Brownlow votes, and two more clutches of six goals in 2003 and 2006.
In 2003 he finished second in the Copeland Trophy to Nathan Buckley, received the Mark of the Year for his skyscraping grab against Geelong in round 18 and was a worthy All-Australian.
But there was an occasional side to Tarrant that hated the spotlight that being at Collingwood constantly shone on him, and he sometimes found some trouble off the field.
In the end, for the sake of both parties, Tarrant was traded Fremantle at the end of 2006. There, with the Dockers, he showed a real maturity by turning himself into the one of game's best backmen. He was third in Fremantle's best and fairest in his last year at the club, 2009, but always wanted the chance to finish his career at Collingwood.
Just as Hawthorn's Trent Croad went to Fremantle and then returned to the Hawks, Tarrant did the same in 2011, offering to play for basically a base salary to chase that elusive premiership - the one that he missed in 2010.
Tarrant had a strong first year back with the Magpies, playing 23 games, finishing 10th in the best and fairest as he slotted into Nathan Brown's role after the young defender suffered a pre-season knee injury.
Sadly, he could not taste the success of a premiership, as the Magpies lost to Geelong by 38 points in the Grand Final.
And his final season - his 15th in the game - would be hampered by a few injuries.
But it would be fitting if Tarrant could do what Croad did with the Hawks after his return from Fremantle - play in a premiership side with his original club.
Collingwood fans who have ridden every step of Tarrant's time in the game would love to see that.
