On and off the field, Jamie Elliott continues to defy the odds.

He stands at just 177cm, and has no right to mark the ball overhead as well as he does.

His injury history is among the lengthiest in the competition, and he has no right to still be playing.

The star Collingwood forward turns 33 this year and is in career-best form, averaging 2.6 goals a game as his side comfortably sits on top of the ladder.

Elliott's injury history is enough to make the most hardened and experienced footballer wince.

The hamstring woes kicked off in 2014, his third season at the top level after being drafted from Euroa, a small town in country Victoria. It's not far from the very same Bonnie Doon made famous by The Castle. The serenity.

He played 17 games in that 2014 season, so it wasn't a write off by any stretch, but an ominous portent of things to come.

The following year was relatively unscathed, playing 20 matches, then came the serious back injury that ended his 2016 season before it started. Back injuries can be debilitating at the best of times, but for an explosive player like Elliott, who twists, turns and leaps in order to lose his taller opponents, it was devastating.

A pars defect was the official diagnosis, which is a stress fracture or break in a small section within a vertebra, usually in the lower lumbar region of the spine.

Elliott finally got back on the park in 2017, playing 17 matches as an ankle injury flared on the eve of the season. 

Then another wasted year, as a combination of ankle and hamstring issues left him without a match in 2018. Another half-season in 2019, playing 16 games as those pesky hamstrings flared again.

Oddly enough, the COVID-affected 2020 was kind to Elliott, until he broke his leg in 2021. 

The injury gods weren't content with a fractured bone, and Elliott missed a chunk of 2022 due to shoulder surgery to repair a damaged AC joint.

And to round out the rollercoaster? A serious vascular (vein) issue in his foot last year, that saw Elliott lose feeling and blood supply to the extremity due to a blood clot issue so rare that his medicos found only one other athlete in Australia to have battled the issue. 

He needed surgery and blood-thinning medication. Upon his return to football towards the end of last season, he said he felt he still needed to build full strength in his leg.

His form this year suggests that his "jumping leg" is now back at capacity.

Elliott doesn't often speak publicly. Like a similarly tattooed player who used to play down the road, he lets his footy do the talking, but can sometimes be coaxed into having a chat about a teammate.

But don't let that public taciturn nature fool you. If there's a job to be done, a match to be won, Elliott is more than happy to take the reins.

"He's very unassuming, very humble guy, they're definitely values that are really important to him. He works hard, often behind the scenes, often when people aren't noticing," close mate Darcy Moore told AFL.com.au.

"He's not someone to do showy or performative acts in front of the group, or around others internally, which makes him really genuine and really authentic. 

"But the strange irony about Jamie is that all those things are true, but when you're on the field, he's so not afraid of the spotlight, being the man and being the one to put the team on his back and execute for us. I think there's a funny irony where he's super humble until it really matters, and then he's more than willing to be the guy to win the game off his boot.

"For someone with such huge talent and amazing ability, he's still very workmanlike in a way, if that makes sense. I think that's epitomised by his match-winning goal against Essendon a few years ago. He didn't even break a smile in the 20 seconds afterwards. I think that sums up Jamie."

Like Elliott, Moore had his own hamstring woes in 2018, and a bad knee injury in 2021, and the pair have spent plenty of hours together on the exercise bikes and in the lap pool at the AIA Centre.

"Jamie has really looked the end of his career in the eye on multiple occasions, and has had to build himself back up from really serious injuries multiple times in his career. That's something that clearly builds character and resilience and shows great strength," Moore said.

"But it makes him such a great teammate, because he knows what it's like, to be in the pits of rehab and have some question marks about your body. 

"We often joke, as mates, about how many of his body parts have metal in them – shoulder, ankle, hips and feet and all that sort of thing. Then obviously soft-tissue history, and his back as well, he's been through it all, and as a teammate and a good mate, it makes it more rewarding to see him perform the way his is at the moment, to know what he's been through over the years."

Collingwood's head of development Josh Fraser has taken the reins of the forward line in the past few weeks, covering Scott Selwood while he's on personal leave, and has quickly gained a closer appreciation for the work Elliott does on the track.

"I've always had a high regard for him and his workrate, his diligence and all those sorts of things, but I guess paying a bit more attention to him as one of the forwards, you can see how special he actually is in terms of age, preparation and what he does on game day," Fraser said.

"Then he's got a huge amount of talent. He can mark the ball in the air in a pack, he can feature at ground level, he's got a beautiful kick for goal and can set them up, too. He's got a skill set that's very hard to match up on, and he gets the most out of himself through his resilience and capacity to work really hard.

"He's got really strong leadership traits. He's a guy that sees the game really well, and on the field, he can set others up. He's unselfish and is a team-first player and they're the things that you have an awareness of, but until you see it up close and in action, you don't fully understand how valuable that side of his game is.

"I think people see the goals after the siren, and the big marks, but it's his workrate and resilience on the field (that) not only allows him to shine but makes people around him better as well."

Elliott was added to Collingwood's leadership group for the first time this year, recognition of his quiet work behind the scenes with individual players.

"He's more likely to throw an arm around a teammate and support them or push them privately, one on one, more of a mentor for younger players. And what we've seen this year with him getting an official title, stepping into the leadership group, there's a bit of responsibility and pressure that comes with that, but he's just turned up in spades," Moore said.

"He's really continued to do that stuff behind the scenes that he always does, but now we've seen it come to the fore a bit more on game day and around the place. He's got so much respect from so many people because of the way he goes about it, there's no question marks there, we're really lucky to have him in the leadership group."

Away from the field, Moore described Elliott as one who is prone to an impulsive hobby, and "certainly not an optimist", rather more a realist. 

"He's recently started learning the keyboard. I haven't actually seen or heard him play, but I'm hearing he's actually not too bad," Moore said.

"I think he's tried to learn the guitar, bought one, never used it. There was a big mountain bike phase one time, he thought he was going to ride a BMX bike with really big chunky wheels on the beach. I never heard of him riding it once, things like that, he's prone to it.

"He's just real. I think that's how I would describe him in those moments, really real and honest and really authentic. The other thing I learned, being on the journey with him a few times in rehab together, is really underneath it all, he is incredibly motivated and works really hard and is just really consistent. He shows up."