And while the other Eagles may be opponents this weekend, Stephenson often finds himself comparing the Magpies with his junior team. “I actually find a resemblance between that side and the Collingwood side,” Stephenson told The Age. “I just like putting blokes together,” said Stephenson as he rattled off names of some of his fellow premiership Eagles, likening them to some of his current teammates. “I just think that we’re so tight as a group, it just shows real similarities with the Ferntree Gully team. “When it’s not tight, you’ve got little cliques. You might have individual groups that are eight or nine people. You come here and it’s one table of blokes and the next day it’s the same table but six different blokes. Everyone interacts and gets along so well without any cliques.

“That’s what it was like at Ferntree Gully.” The closeness of the Collingwood team has been a theme of this season. After a torturous 2017 that crescendoed with a formal review of the football department, many Magpies have juxtaposed the feelings of the two seasons and reflected on the turnaround as a symbol of redemption. But for Stephenson, the beginning of his story at Collingwood has been nothing but unity and fellowship. Jaidyn Stephenson took his mother to the Brownlow. Credit:AAP

“All the boys have let me know, this certainly doesn’t happen every year and there’s going to be some down times but while we’re at the highs right now so I’m going to embrace them.” And while, as Stephenson says, there are no “cliques” at Collingwood, the teenager has found a father figure in Brownlow Medal runner up Steele Sidebottom. “He’s almost a bit like a dad,” Stephenson laughed. “I’ve just moved house and I needed a drill, so I go to Steele. “I needed a car to carry my couch, Steele, can I borrow your car?

“He’s the fix-it man! He’s got everything and he just helps me out.” On the field, Stephenson doesn’t need to borrow many tools from his teammates. The 19 year-old has played in all 25 games in his first year, booting 36 goals, averaging 13 disposals and three tackles a game. He’s become a key member of the Magpies’ newly-formed dynamic forward six and, unlike so many draftees, he played his entire junior career as a permanent forward. “I’ve always played as a full forward so it’s a bit different trying to rove the packs. I’d love to transition into the midfield as time goes on," Stephenson said.

The man who saw him play as a permanent forward and coached him for the vast majority of his junior years, Danny Cassidy, describes Stephenson as a “natural born leader”. “The boy could play anywhere,” Cassidy told The Age. Cassidy fondly remembers the Eagles’ Under 12s year, when Stephenson had to leave the team for four weeks after being selected in the state league team. “The boys started crying. They were saying: ‘how are we going to win without Jaidyn?’” After the four week period expired, Stephenson rushed back to his beloved club football and arrived at the ground at half time for the grudge match against rivals Forest Hill.

“I had to beg the other team’s coach to let him play,” Cassidy said. As the game went on the scores got closer and Stephenson, aged 11, found himself marking the ball 40 metres out when the final siren went. “We were down by a point, so we were just hopeful for a score,” the coach recalled. “All of a sudden, halfway through his run up, he changes his grip from a drop punt to a torpedo, puts it through goal post height straight through the middle! “Ever since then I thought; the boy is gonna’ go places!”