Shinboner number: 805
Guernsey number: 10
Born: July 2, 1971
North Melbourne games: 192 (1989-2004)
Goals: 127
Captain: 2002-03
North Melbourne Hall of Fame inductee: 2011
Elevated to Legend status: 2016

Anthony Stevens appeared indestructible on the football field. At 178cm and 81kg, Stevens couldn’t level packs like long-time teammate Wayne Carey, nor could he hip-and-shoulder opponents like Byron Pickett. And he certainly couldn’t spook opponents with implied menace like Glenn Archer and Mick Martyn. What Stevens could do was take everything the opposition threw at him and then bounce straight up for more. Call it indestructibility by resilience.

At stoppages, the midfielder would be at the foot of every ruck contest, eyes only for the ball, ready to scuffle, scrap, scramble or dive to get there first. Time and time again, he put his head over the ball. No matter who could be coming the other way, no matter how hard he had been hit the time before.

Once the ball got into open space, Stevens would run until he was exhausted. Then he would run some more. Archer, who played alongside him for 13 seasons, said Stevens’ ability to push through pain ranked alongside that of the 1990s' best gut-runner, St Kilda great Robert Harvey.

The 1999 Grand Final is perhaps the best example of Stevens’ indestructibility. Less than eight days earlier, Stevens landed awkwardly after flying for a chest mark in the second quarter of North’s preliminary final win over the Brisbane Lions. 

The North vice-captain was diagnosed with a fractured heel and torn ankle ligaments, injuries he was told normally required a 14-16 week recovery period. His right leg was “black and blue up to [his] knee”, but he was determined to take on Carlton in the Grand Final, embarking on a thrice-daily regime of physio and recovery walks in the waters of Port Phillip Bay to reduce the swelling in his ankle.

Coach Denis Pagan told his vice-captain at the start of Grand Final week he didn’t think he would play, but said: “If you can give me 10 minutes on Thursday on the training track, I’ll play you.” Stevens was able to do that with the aid of painkillers - he couldn’t feel his foot hitting the ground - after which he practised his goalkicking, barely able to kick 30 metres.

Pagan had never seen anyone play with a similar injury, but Stevens was in the centre square of the MCG two days later when the ball was bounced to start the Grand Final. 

The midfielder made a solid start against the Blues, winning six possessions in the first quarter, all of them kicks. But midway through the second quarter he went to tackle Brett Ratten, and when the Blues midfielder swerved at the last moment Stevens’s right arm copped the brunt of the collision, tearing the pectoral muscle from the bone.

Stevens came from the ground, but after a painkilling injection returned after half-time. Midway through the third quarter, he could barely move his arm and, with the pre-game painkillers in his ankle wearing off, he had been reduced to a shuffle. The vice-captain reluctantly trudged from the ground for good soon afterwards, but by then the game was won. 

When Wayne Carey left the club in the pre-season of 2002, Pagan wanted Stevens to succeed Carey as captain, convinced it was “the right thing” for the on-baller. But Stevens took convincing, concerned he did not need the job’s extra responsibilities at such a difficult time.

Three times Stevens told Pagan “no”, but his father, Clive, finally convinced him to accept the captaincy. “He said, ‘You might regret it, if you don’t take it,’” Stevens said. He knew he had his teammates’ total support and sensed he could lean on them more than ever. “Wayne controlled a lot of things at the footy club, but with him going all of a sudden we had 10 to 12 captains that came out of nowhere,” Stevens said. “We had Johnny Blakey, David King, ‘Arch’, who I saw as co-captain in a way, Leigh Colbert, Matthew Burton, Sav Rocca and Adam Simpson stood up as a young fella.”

From the small town of Waaia, 220km north of Melbourne, Stevens grew up on a dairy farm. After playing all of his junior football at Waaia Football Club, Stevens played a season with Shepparton before being drafted. Shepparton’s coach was North’s 1977 premiership midfielder Xavier Tanner and Stevens, despite being a “mad Collingwood supporter” was “in awe” of him.

Taken by North with pick 18 in the 1988 national draft, Stevens spent his first pre-season training with Pagan’s under-19s squad. Pagan was a hard taskmaster but Stevens thrived in the master coach’s football-finishing school. After playing 10 games in the under-19s in 1989, Stevens graduated to the reserves, and then after six games there he played the final four rounds in the seniors, his first game, ironically, a win against Collingwood.

John Kennedy was in his final season as North coach that year, so Stevens’ involvement with the three-time premiership coach and legend of the game was limited. But the 1998 All-Australian remembered the advice Kennedy gave him in the MCG changerooms after North’s 1989 season ended with a 43-point defeat by the Swans: “Son, you’ve got a big future but you need to improve your decision-making and disposal.”

Stevens worked hard to do just that under Kennedy’s successor, Wayne Schimmelbusch. He said he “loved” his three years under Schimmelbusch. The North great took him under his wing, sensing the hard-working youngster played the game with the same wholehearted determination Schimma had shown in the 1970s and ’80s.

Schimmelbusch worked closely with Stevens to refine the rough edges of his game but made him earn his senior opportunities. He was in and out of the team in 1990 and 1991 (playing 25 games). However, by the end of the coach’s reign he was a regular senior player.

Under Pagan, Stevens provided much of the midfield grunt and gut-busting run that powered North’s golden 1990s era. Carey aside, no one was more important to the Roos in that period. From 1993 until North’s second and final premiership under Pagan in 1999, Stevens did not finish outside the top two in the best and fairest, save for 1995 when he missed the Roos’ final four games with a torn medial ligament.

He was one of only three men to win the Syd Barker Medal in those seven seasons, his triumphs in 1997 and 1999 coming alongside Carey’s in 1993, 1996 and 1998 and star on-baller Wayne Schwass’ in 1994 and 1995.

Stevens often played run-with roles, especially in Pagan’s early years at the helm. His two toughest opponents were St Kilda’s Harvey, who taught him—by close observation—the supreme fitness required to match the competition’s elite on-ballers, and Geelong’s Garry Hocking, who taught him the required toughness.

Stevens soon became an elite midfielder in his own right. Although not as talented as Schwass, Stevens made up for any lack of natural ability with sheer willpower. Schwass, who had made his own debut a year and a half before Stevens, saw his teammate start as a "a skinny kid from the bush" and finish "a club legend".