Four-point margin. One quarter left for the season. You’d be forgiven for feeling a little on edge.

As the clock wound down in the third term, an unselfish Bobby Hill allowed Scott Pendlebury to kick the goal to give Collingwood the lead back.

Calm and composed, Pendlebury the player was doing everything he could to will his side over the line. Yet as soon as that siren went to signal the last break for the year, he activated coach mode.

That typical clarity and composure transferred right into his conversations with teammates and coaches, and he made a beeline for one of Collingwood’s most important off field staff members.

As the huddle broke following one more rev up from Craig McRae, Pendlebury found his man, and Collingwood High Performance Manager Jarrod Wade needed only to listen.

“I’d been talking to Pendles during the week about rotations and then at three quarter time, the huddle breaks and he just comes straight over to me,” Wade recalls.

“I was already thinking about it in my head, and he goes ‘I’m going to come off at three minutes, I’m going to tell Jordy to come off at six minutes, and then just leave us on the ground for the rest of the game’.

“I was like ‘okay fair enough’ and I reckon he ran off at like two minutes into the quarter - he ran off real early.

“I’d spoken about leaving him out there for the fourth quarter and he goes ‘Nup, I need a rotation and I’m going to come off real early and then I’m going to tell Jordy to come off’.

“He came on for Jordy, so he did it all after he spoke to me. He went and spoke to Jordy and then it all just happened.”

Pendlebury’s leadership has long been lauded, but his proactivity was something to behold for Wade.

Having found Jordan De Goey stuck on the bench for the dying stages of the Preliminary Final, Wade knew a clearer plan was needed, and Pendlebury was just as aware of it as he was.

“I just remember three quarter time because the Prelim final we buggered up his rotations, Pendles played the whole last quarter,” Wade says.

“Then we took Jordy off late and we couldn’t get him back on and it was a big thing.

“In the Prelim Pendles obviously didn’t get a rotation at all and he said he was fine, but with the heat on Saturday he came to me and said ‘I’ll just need a short one’.

“So then I didn’t even have to call Pendles off, normally I’ll tell Larissa on the bench, put the number on the board after a goal or whenever they rotate, but Pendles just ran off and I’d already told Tom Mitchell who was starting on the bench that Pendles was going to come at some stage and to just be ready.

“So Pendles ran off, Tommy went on, and then Jordy went off and Pendles ran on.

“By ten minutes, they’d had their rotation and they were ready to go.”

In that four-minute period Pendlebury was on the bench in the last quarter, assistant coach Hayden Skipworth hoped on the phone.

Having also been made aware of the former captain’s plans, Skipworth knew he didn’t need to say much, but gave a closing line that proceeded Pendlebury’s fourth quarter for the ages.

“He was organising pretty much all the rotations at three quarter time and then basically he came off about two or three minutes into the quarter and I just got on the phone and said ‘you’re the best on field coach the game has ever seen, go out and get the win for us’,” Skipworth says.

“He doesn’t get fazed with what the stage of the game it is or his own performance and he can stay really cool and calm and have really good clear thoughts throughout those pressure moments.

“I think he’s always got that extra level, he plays a smart game of footy and he’s always got that extra gear he can go to late in the game.

“He manages his energy throughout the game and knows how long there is to go and what it needs so he does manage himself through the game really well.

“You could definitely see his appetite, he’s a winner and you could see him pointing and directing, he was like a traffic cop out there getting it organised, so he just went into whatever it takes to win the game.”

Unsurprisingly, these moments are built from weeks of preparation.

Having reduced his workload in the 2023 season, Wade said he and Pendlebury had hatched a plan weeks out from the decider to prepare the 35-year-old for more game time throughout the finals.

“Pendles is one that I continually talk to about what the right thing is and we actually started some things, maybe after the (Round 21) Hawthorn game,” he says.

“He’d been playing lower game time this year compared to say last year and last year in the Sydney Prelim he came off in the first quarter and then not at all after that.

“So because he’d been playing lower game time earlier in the year he came to me and said ‘you need to start leaving me out there for full quarters so I can get used to it and so I can start building the fitness to do it’.

“Not many players get that license, there’s him and there’s Nick who we sometimes leave on for full quarters and our key forwards and key backs often don’t rotate.

“He’s just a freak isn’t he?”