Queen's Birthday, 2009; Nick Maxwell was part of the gang tackle that greeted Jack Watts a few seconds into his debut game, but remembers it differently to most.
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"The tackle was too much and he actually got the free kick. He won the ball," said the former Collingwood captain.
"His first possession was a contested ball win but no one looks at it that way. They just think of three guys tackling him. It's funny, how that's the thing that's stuck in people's minds."
Watts has played 125 more times since that day, when he ran out onto the MCG not knowing what would be waiting just a few steps over the boundary line.
He was 18 years old and 75 days. He was the No.1 draft pick, still at school. He was a reason to come and see the Demons play in yet another struggling season. His club was ready, even if he wasn't.
As Tim Lane said from the commentary box, as the team ran through their banner: "Melbourne have a bit of a balancing act here, between selling their gun recruit and keeping the lid on him."
Was he prepared? Watts has said he obviously wasn't, simply because it's almost impossible to be given the gap between junior and AFL-level football. "I was a 17, 18-year-old kid."
One of his teammates that day has a slightly different take, though. Russell Robertson thought Watts was ready to go, and hasn't changed his mind in the years since.
But he's not convinced the players around Watts were ready to help him be what they all wanted him to be.
He thinks they were distracted, perhaps, by their own unconscious hope he might actually be the one to start making everything better, the saviour.
"It was up to the boys that day to make sure he was protected, and look after him, and assimilate him into the team. And I'm not sure we looked after him very well," Robertson said.
"I do think that one moment's been overplayed. I get bemused when people say they think it ruined him, because every player's been tackled, but it says a bit about where we were at.
"Maybe we were in that space where we were thinking, we've got the No.1 pick and he's got so much talent. He'll come in with a few other kids and before you know it we'll be a good team again."
That Watts was talented was not lost on the Collingwood players, either. That was the very reason they went for him as he stepped off the bench; he wasn't just any piece of fresh meat.
The build-up to his first game had been impossible to miss: Watts did an interview with The Footy Show, a media conference and had cameras follow him into the ground.
Supporters received a text message from club president Jim Stynes, telling them to make sure they were there to see the kid wear his No.4 red and blue guernsey for the first of many times.
"What happened was out of respect for him. You don't go after the 22nd player on the team. We'd heard about him and we knew how much talent and potential he had," Maxwell said.
"I guess what we wanted was to make sure he didn't have a big impact, that he didn't jump us and end up being the difference in a game of football that we really wanted to win.
"With any good kid who comes in, you want to make sure the first time they play against your team is a hard time for them, because everyone remembers the first time they play a team.
"If you play really well, kick a few goals and everything goes well, then the next time you play that team you've almost got a start on them already because you go in feeling really good.
"But it works vice versa, too. If you have a tough game, or you find it hard physically or you feel sore afterwards, then the next time you play them it's going to have some affect on you.
"I guess with Jack it was about making sure he didn't end up being the difference that day, and trying to then put that bit of doubt into his head for the next time he was going to play us."
Watts is 25 now (and 81 days). He has some more recent memories to draw on at the MCG: he kicked four first-half goals when Melbourne beat Collingwood eight weeks ago.
More than that, he is what he wasn't back then: part of a team that gets the ball forward, that is winning more games than it used to, that doesn't need him to be the man, in any way.
He has always been upbeat, always loved and cared for his teammates and always been someone that they cared about too. But this year he has been other things to them, too.
"He's always been very well liked by the players, but I think what Jack understands now is that there's a big difference between being liked and being respected," said football manager Josh Mahoney.
"He's changed the way he looks at leadership and knows that the way to get respected is by his actions around the club every day and every week, but also in how he performs on game day."
There's more predictability there. "He's much more consistent with his attack on the ball, and so his form's become more consistent," Mahoney said.
"That's where we've seen the growth, in the way he's really taken control of his own career."
There's more. He's averaging two goals a game. He's getting more of the ball in the forward line than ever before. He's setting up more scores. Robertson has a word for his kicking: sublime.
"Some weeks it's almost like, God, he's so good to watch," he said. "He does all the little things that make you think, I'm glad I got to come along today and watch Jack play.
"There's the little hangers he takes; he turns blokes inside out; his kicking has been brilliant; he kicks nice goals; he's always thinking those two or three seconds ahead of the game.
"He's a beautiful player to watch when he's flourishing, and the boys are getting the ball to him so much more now. They're saying: 'There you go Jack, do your thing', and it's a really nice thing to see."
