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Glenn Archer and Wayne Schimmelbusch
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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."
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