He played 311 games and gave every last ounce of energy to the North Melbourne Football Club, but Glenn Archer admits he almost missed his chance.

Speaking on Rex Hunt’s Your Football Life program for SEN, the Shinboner of the Century revealed his unconventional path to the AFL.

“I never played representative footy for Victoria, never played Teal Cup - no-one really had a look at me,” Archer said.

“I played at a club called Lyndale which is in the Noble Park area, then I went to Noble Park for a couple of years, but I was never on anyone’s radar.

“Greg Miller who was the great recruiting officer at North Melbourne saw me … I was playing for Dandenong or something down at Prahran and he saw something and said ‘come down and train with us in the under 19’s’.”

For most teenagers, being recognised for your footballing prowess is a dream come true, but it wasn’t all plain sailing.

“Denis Pagan was the coach. I went down there and I lasted about three weeks doing a pre-season,” Archer said.

“One, I didn’t think I was good enough anyway to make the grade and two, I was mucking up with my mates and didn’t really want to dedicate myself too much to training.”

That could have so easily been the end of any ambitions of playing in the AFL, but looking back, Archer couldn’t be more grateful another chance arose.

“I left (North’s under 19’s) and then a year later I was playing senior football at Noble when I was 18 and Denis (Pagan) gave me a call.

“I was a forward at the time and it was round five of the ’91 under 19’s season and he said ‘do you want to come down and have a game? We are struggling for forwards’.

“I said ‘nah I’m fine’, but after about the tenth time that he rang the house, I said to my girlfriend, now wife, ‘I’m going to go down and play one game and get this guy off my back’.”

The rest of the story is history.

“I went down there for one game, with all intentions to play one game at Arden Street,” Archer said.

“I worked out the following week that North was playing Sydney up in Sydney and I’d never been on a plane before so I thought ‘yeh I’ll tick that box as well’.

“I played two games, enjoyed it and thought ‘yeh I’ll hang around for a while’.|

Archer didn’t just ‘hang around’ though. He became a club great, with his commitment to the jumper unrivalled by most during the club’s illustrious history.

So easily he could have never joined the club, but for the persistence of Denis Pagan, but supporters, teammates and anyone involved at North are glad he did.