With all the talk around this week about 'Boomer' Harvey at North Melbourne and Corey Enright at Geelong, it seems like a good time to dip back into the history books and check on how Collingwood's games record has evolved over the years.

The current record stands at 313, and it's held – of course – by 1990 premiership skipper Tony Shaw. But how did we get here?

At the end of Collingwood's first season, 1892, three players had played the greatest number of games (18). They were Andy Allan (who later played with St Kilda and Preston), goalsneak Archie Smith and Tasmanian recruit George Watt, who had captained the team in its very first game that season.

By the end of 1893, Allan and Watt shared the record with 37. That figure had extended to 51 by the end of 1894, jointly held by George Anderson and Ernie Ashton.

In 1895, Archie Smith became the sole games record holder, and he'd taken his tally to 68 by the end of that season. He held the title until he retired at the end of 1902, by which time he'd set a mark of 176 games.

Mighty centre half-back Jack Monohan broke Smith's mark against St Kilda in round 10 of 1903, and ended up setting an imposing new mark of 236 games (teammate Charlie Pannam was on 229 when both he and Monohan retired at the end of 1907).

Monohan's record of 236 was eventually broken by Jock McHale in the 1915 Grand Final against Carlton, while McHale's final tally of 261 was eclipsed 20 years later by Gordon Coventry against Carlton in round nine of the 1935 season.

Coventry became the first VFL player to top 300 games and eventually totalled 306 – a figure that stayed as a Collingwood record until 23 July in 1994, when Tony Shaw played his 307^th game against the Western Bulldogs at Whitten Oval.