It’s ten years on since Sydney’s drought breaking premiership in 2005.

It means it’s ten years since Leo Barry took that mark to save the flag, ten years since Paul Roos bellowed “HERE IT IS!” from atop the dais and ten years since Chris Judd won the Norm Smith Medal in a losing side.

It also means that it’s ten years since Scott Pendlebury and Dale Thomas led Gippsland to a premiership in the TAC Cup.

For it was that Gippsland v Dandenong match that raised the curtain at the MCG on Grand Final day ahead of the Sydney v West Coast heroics.

And it was in that match, played at 10.10am in front of a small crowd, that two of the key planks of Collingwood’s next decade would emerge.

Thomas, named in the forward pocket, was the star, kicking four of the Power’s twelve goals en route to a 16-point win.

“While there were several players on each side in line for possible selection in November's AFL draft, including potential father-son picks Travis Tuck and Jay Neagle, it was Thomas who shone brightest on the biggest stage today,” wrote The Age.

“The 181cm midfielder displayed dazzling skills, as well as a dose of aggression, and kicked a goal in each quarter to guide the Power to victory, and claim the official award as the grand final's best player.”

As we well know, it wouldn’t be the last time Thomas would appear on the MCG on Grand Final day.

His teammate, Pendlebury, didn’t steal the show on the biggest day of all.

But that’s not to say that he didn’t play his role.

“In the Grand Final, Pendlebury was solid, but unobtrusive, Dale Thomas an eye-catching, All-Australian best on ground,” Greg Baum wrote in The Age four years later.

A user of an online forum saw the game a little differently, commenting that “Pendlebury had a touch of magic and looks to me like a guy who could step up to AFL level… It looks like he has huge scope for improvement.”

He wasn’t wrong.

As we well know, Thomas and Pendlebury would go on to be drafted to Collingwood with picks No. 2 and No. 5 in the November National Draft.

"We thought with Dale, he's a guy who can go forward and play through the midfield. He kicks the ball really well and both sides of the body,” recruiting boss Derek Hine later told scribes.

“We're really pleased to get Scott Pendlebury.

“He's a 190 centimetre midfielder and we think he's got enormous scope for improvement. But already he holds the ball really well and just finds time to use it.”

They weren’t the only players Hine pinched from the Grand Final teams.

Dandenong midfielders Ryan Cook and Danny Nicholls both played for Collingwood, debuting in 2007.

Nicholls spent two years on the list, and a third on the VFL list, while Cook, who played fourteen games, was still on the senior list when the club claimed its fifteenth premiership in 2010.



In the years since, the likes of Steele Sidebottom (2008), Darcy Moore and Jordan De Goey (2014) have gone on to make their mark in a TAC Cup Grand Final ahead of their respective National Drafts.

Right now, most, if not all names on the Eastern Rangers and Oakleigh Chargers’ team sheets for Sunday’s Grand Final would be unfamiliar to most football watchers (for those keen, get down to Etihad Stadium at 11.05am on Sunday or tune into Fox Footy to watch on television).

But come draft day on 24 November, who knows?

We might well be talking about a handful of them in ten years’ time.

Gippsland Power            12.9 (81)
Dandenong Stingrays    10.6 (66)

Goals – Gippsland: Thomas 4, Neagle 2, Dore, Dunne, Pendlebury, Ellis, Fraser, Ryan
Disposals – Gippsland: Delphine 30, Dunne 22, Thomas 20, Ellis 19, Pendlebury 17

Goals – Dandenong: Cook 3, Comben 3, Lee 2, Murray 2
Disposals – Dandenong: Jones 36, Nicholls 20, Cook 19, Tuck 19, Magner 18

Gippsland Power
B: Dore, Flint, Youle
HB: Ellis, Hansen, Vernon
C: Pendlebury, O'Bryan, Dunne
HF: Eddy, Fraser, Ryan
F: Ross, Neagle, Thomas
Foll: West, Vansittart, Delphine
Int: Macaffer, Hughes, Noonan, Truscio, Lieshout, Johnson, Goldsack, Dowd

Dandenong Stingrays
B: Rebeschini, Kirkwood, Wright
HB: Magner, Gill, Tuck
C: Jones, Carpenter, Bosward
HF: Cook, Horaczko, Murray
F: Barker, Bentley, Crowe
R: Lee, Nicholls, Scalzo
Int: T. Kelly, Stanley, McCall, Hill, Ferraro, Comben, Robinson, Farrelly

*Note: You may find a few familiar names on the Gippsland interchange bench. Brent Macaffer and Tyson Goldsack were named in the Power’s squad but were not selected in the final team.

Others to play that morning were Xavier Ellis, Jay Neagle, Robert Eddy, Lachlan Hansen, Ben Ross, Trent West, Nathan Jones, Danny Nicholls, Travis Tuck, Ryan Cook, James Magner and Greg Bentley, who all went on to play senior football in the AFL.