As the clock ticked past 6pm local time in Fiji on the 14^th of October last year, Nick Daicos had read and seen enough to celebrate.

In his mind, Dan Houston – who a 12-year-old Daicos had met back in 2016 at Carey Grammar – was on his way to the AIA Vitality Centre for season 2025 and beyond.

Reports confirmed as much were true, with a suite of media outlets suggesting the two-time All Australian had joined the black and white that evening, prompting Daicos to send a message of congratulations.

“I was at dinner in Fiji with my partner having a champagne and I sent him a photo of the champagne and said ‘it’s been popped and we’re celebrating’,” Daicos recalled.

But when the clock struck 6pm in Melbourne – an hour after that champagne had popped in Fiji where it was now 7pm - the deal was off. Only 60 minutes had passed, but Houston’s metaphorical take off from Port Adelaide to Collingwood had been forced to make an emergency landing.

“I was sitting by my phone waiting for a call from my manager because I just wanted to hear something that was going in the right direction,” Houston said of that Monday.

“I got a call later on around Monday, 4pm and he (Houston’s manager) goes ‘I reckon it’s going to get done today’ and I sort of started to get that feeling that it was almost over.

“Later Monday night I got a call from my manager and he said ‘the next phone call I’m going to give you is the one’ and I went up to the back beach with (partner) Steph and I was like ‘this is actually going to happen’ and I got a phone call from my manager which was meant to be the “one” and he goes ‘It’s all fallen through’ and I was like ‘you’re kidding me’.

“How can this happen two days out when I’ve just been put through the ringer for the best part of three or four months?”

Amongst Houston’s stress and the symphony of dings ringing through his phone as notifications flooded through, was that message from Daicos.

“(Nick goes) I just popped a bottle of champagne and I’m like ‘mate, don’t pop it, it’s not fully done’ and then it got canned and I was like ‘I knew that was going to happen’,” Houston said.

“I barely slept that Monday night just not knowing if it was going to happen.”

With a bottle of champagne in the rearview mirror, Daicos was none the wiser the trade hadn’t been confirmed, only discovering in the morning his former schoolmate wasn’t officially his teammate just yet.

“The next morning there was a bit of confusion about whether the trade had been done so I think it was a bit of a premature popping of the champagne,” Daicos laughed.

But all’s well that ends well. Houston enjoyed a much-less stressful Tuesday, as all parties agreed to a multi-faceted deal that made him a Pie.

“Tuesday was just phone call after phone call and waiting by my phone for a long period of time,” he said.

“I was actually right here (in his kitchen), I had my phone plugged in because I was on it for about eight hours leading up to it.

“I had it on charge and then got the phone call here and once I got the phone call and everything had come out my phone stopped working for a bit but this is where I got the call which is pretty cool.

“I remember messaging Fly and telling him that I was committed to playing for the Pies.

“Playing for the biggest club in the land in Melbourne where I’m from is a dream come true and I’m looking forward to playing for the Pies in 2025.”

That sentence is something Houston had been hoping would come to fruition since the midway point of the 2024 season.

With his contract status well-known around the league, the fact he was playing All-Australian calibre football (which he would be rewarded with in the form of an second blazer at the end of the year) and being on a high-performing Port Adelaide team only added to the speculation around his future as Houston recounts a flurry of emotions.

“Trying to play good footy and trying to win a flag while all the speculation was going on was one of the hardest things I’ve done,” he said.

“I held my cards pretty close to my chest, I didn’t want to tell anyone and be a distraction.

“Being in a two-club town of Adelaide, the scrutiny is pretty high. They either love you or they hate you. I had to narrow my focus with what was going on and it became a bit of a fishbowl in the end.”

While Houston dealt with the potential fall out, the complications in landing him at the Pies was what was keeping Justin Leppitsch up at night, with the list boss never fully confident the deal would be done.

“At early stages, we felt like it wasn’t going to happen given we didn’t have a first round draft pick to appease Port Adelaide with,” Leppitsch said.

“John Noble wanted to head to the Gold Coast and Joe Richards wanted to head to Port Adelaide and I guess Jack Lukosius wanted to go from Gold Coast to Port Adelaide, so I guess in some ways the three clubs started to realise very quickly that we were embedded together.

“We jumped at the opportunity to do that and really worked with his management in Paul Connors to try and get him to us because we know he had other interest from other clubs as well.”

Five months on, and Houston is flying around the track as he prepares for a maiden season in the black and white stripes.

And despite going a little early on the celebrations, Daicos might just have played a small part in manufacturing a new partner in crime.

Sharing a FaceTime or two in the lead up to Houston’s decision, Daicos took a slice of the credit in the eventual move, to go with his glass of celebratory champagne

“I take a little bit of credit, I’m sure Leppa won’t be happy with that, but I’d like to say that I helped him come across and convinced him that Collingwood was a better option than some of the teams he was looking at clubs,” Daicos said.

And from Houston’s perspective:

“I remember we had a FaceTime and we had a chat about what Collingwood was like and it was a really good Club, good culture and he really enjoyed it would love to play with me. From then on, we sort of stayed in contact and was following pretty closely from the texts we were having,” Houston said.

“For me to hear that and also grow up with him and wanting to play with him, Josh (Daicos) and some of the other boys I grew up with was the thing that really appealed to me.

“At that stage I told my manager I was committed to the Magpies and my manager pushed it really hard that it was the Magpies.”

Houston’s start to life as a Magpie goes into more depth during the Club’s pre-season series ‘The Grind’ which premieres on Collingwood's YouTube at 7pm on Sunday night.