KANGAROOS premiership legend Wayne Schimmelbusch says he couldn't be happier that it will be Glenn Archer who passes his record 306-game milestone for the club  against Carlton at the weekend.

Schimmelbusch, who coached Archer in his first season of AFL football in 1992, said the veteran had won the unqualified respect from the football world for the way he has approached his football over a glittering career.

"One of Glenn's attributes is that he's respected right across the board – not just by his teammates and supporters - but opposition sides have the utmost respect for him, as well as their supporters," Schimmelbusch said.

"I think every young player should aim for that universal respect and I think Glenn has certainly got that."

Despite his standing in the game, Archer admits he is slightly embarrassed to be passing the 20-year-old games record of the club he joined as a teenager in 1990.

"It doesn't sit real comfortably with me," Archer said. "Schimma's a legend of our club and a legend of the AFL.

"When I walked into the club 17 years ago and saw Schimma's name up on the wall with 306 games I never thought I'd get anywhere near that so it's certainly a little bit surreal for me.

"He is so revered around our footy club, and even as a kid I was a Collingwood supporter, but you knew the name Wayne Schimmelbusch. I still hold Schimma on such a high pedestal so it's hard to see yourself in the same light.

"Once you get a little bit older and you retire they reckon you think you're a bit better than you were so I might start pumping my own tyres up a little bit then!"

The fact that Schimmelbusch was his first senior coach adds to the thrill for Archer, who managed nine games in his debut year for the Roos.

Archer credits his former mentor with giving him the confidence he needed to carve out a successful career in the AFL, a quality he says he didn't always have.

"I have to thank Schimma for a lot… he put me in the senior team when I thought other players might have been in front of me.

"I went back to the seconds and I reckon I was one of the only players in the history of the game who didn't want to get back into the seniors because I started off that badly in my first two or three games.

"I think my third game was against Footscray and my first possession went to the opposition.

"I heard the crowd go ‘ohhh’ and my second went to the opposition again and they were screaming again and when my third went to the opposition again I heard them say 'get him off'. I just didn't want to be part of it," he said.

"But Schimma saw something in me and by the end of the year he gave me some big jobs like Gavin Brown and Greg Anderson and Richard Osborne.

“I started to get a bit of confidence and I went into the next year thinking I could play the game."

Schimmelbusch can still recall seeing a young Glenn Archer running around in the club's old under-19 team and knew after a few of those early senior appearances that the raw kid in the number 11 guernsey would be a more than handy AFL footballer.

"We watched him play in the thirds fairly closely. He obviously had plenty of aggression and he was a bit raw around the edges at that stage," Schimmelbusch said.

"[But] we had no hesitation in making sure Glenn was one of the ones who stayed on our list.

"We gave him his first game probably a few games before the end of the season and we gave him some pretty big tasks.

“We put him on Gavin Brown, who was Collingwood's captain, and Richard Osborne at Fitzroy, and there were a couple of others.

"But he acquitted himself so well in those games that he ended up coming sixth or seventh in the best and fairest, so we knew right from then that Glenn was going to have a great career at this footy club."