Nick Daicos used to walk around like he knew a career in the AFL was his destiny.

You can’t really blame him. Everywhere he looked, football was involved. Born into AFL and Collingwood royalty through his dad Peter, who needs no introduction, by the time he was 14 when brother Josh was drafted, he was the only male member of his family not to have become an AFL player.

So, once he was eligible to enter the league, the youngest Daicos wasn’t going to let that unfair statistic remain the case.

As he reaches his 100^th game, this is the story of how Nick made his destiny a reality. Told by those around him throughout the first 18 years of his life before he officially joined the Club, junior coaches, opponents and his older brother recall the stories and moments they knew that Nick was headed not just for a career in the big leagues, but one that would exceed expectations from day one.

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Everyone on the Greythorn Falcons’ Under 11s team wore helmets to go with their red, white and blue vertically-striped jumpers. Ostensibly, they all looked the same. Oftentimes, it was an arduous task to distinguish one kid from another. But there was one player that was immune to the inconspicuousness of his team.

Whether it was showing some flair with his helmet or boot of choice, or his unmistakably tanned skin derived from a storied Macedonian heritage, the youngest Daicos sibling carried with him something Gen Z might now label as aura – even as an 11-year-old. Not that he really needed the accoutrements, with his remarkable skills alone setting him apart from the rest.

Will Phillips, who after a five-year, 50-game AFL career for North Melbourne has joined the Pies’ VFL side in 2026, recalled the first time he laid eyes on the young Falcon who couldn’t be missed.

“I remember playing Nick when he was at Greythorn in his early days and they all wore helmets, so he had a little helmet on,” Phillips said.

“He was the most skilful player on their team. He wasn’t that big, but I remembered he’d have bright boots or a bright helmet, and it matched his tanned skin, and he was just so skilful.

“I realised early how competitive he was. He wasn’t that aggressive of a kid but there was a little bit of a rivalry with his team and ours (Beverely Hills Junior Football Club).

“He was playing an age group up, so it was even better that he was doing that at that level.”

While undeniably Daicos’ childhood and genetic predisposition for skills with the Sherrin was the genesis of his football career, the breeding ground was his days in the Yarra Junior Football League (YJFL) as he set out at becoming an AFL-listed player.

Through Under 11s to 15s – where in the last of those seasons he took home the league Best & Fairest as a Kew Rover – Daicos left those watching him play in his formative years with a story to tell of the time they saw a future great. And for Phillips, who himself was forging a path to the bright lights of the AFL, it offered a peer to challenge himself against each step of the way.

“The bigger and stronger he got the more he became a gun in that competition,” he said.

“His ability to read the ball and his decision-making and speed were amazing. At that level, there’s still a difference in size and he was a year younger, so he wasn’t necessarily using contests skills as much as he was his outside ability.

“Having a set shot you just knew he was going to kick it there was no doubting that.

“I remember we sent a tagger to him a couple of times to try and rough him up a little bit and he’s had to deal with that for the rest of his career.”

At the time he won that Under 15 league medal, Daicos was a Camberwell Grammar student enduring Year 9. But over the 2018 summer, it was decided he’d make the switch to the nearby Carey Baptist Grammar – allowing him to join the fishbowl of the Associated Public Schools (APS) football system - a haven for prospective AFL players.

That’s where then-Carey coach Vince Dattoli first met him. While a Year 10 stepping into the school’s First XVIII didn’t happen regularly, it wasn’t unprecedented, and Dattoli said it was a no-brainer for Daicos to become a crucial member of his side from the outset of his time at his new school.

Initially, that was playing as a deep forward, despite his size compared to his older opponents. With footy smarts and speed to burn, Dattoli used his new secret weapon as close to the goal square as possible to bamboozle Year 11 and 12 draft hopefuls from all around the state. That was until one day against the notoriously strong Xavier College, when the playmaking abilities of Daicos emerged out of an uncharacteristically poor initial output.

“He stepped right in as a Year 10 playing as a permanent forward for the first little bit and then there was one game where he wasn’t getting his hands on the ball as much against Xavier,” Dattoli remembered.

“It’s funny, we threw him to half back when we were five goals down and from half back, he just tore the game apart with his run.

“I laugh when I watch him at different times with his capacity and his ability to get himself in a position to get those handball receives for Collingwood because they just resonate with me from that day we played against Xavier.

“I’m a big believer that there are some natural instincts that some athletes have got and Nick’s got an abundance of them within his toolkit.

“I think it came extremely naturally for him to run from behind the ball because obviously he’s so good at it now, but he naturally had it and there’s no surprise at all given the stuff his dad and brother have done too.”

When Gold Coast’s Matt Rowell won last year’s Brownlow Medal, a photo featuring him and two of his SUNS teammates in skipper Noah Anderson and midfielder Ben Jepson re-emerged from their days as Carey premiership players. But there’s a fourth player in that photo too, someone two years the trio’s junior, but no-less of a contributor to the school’s 2019 flag.

While Daicos was one of the youngest player’s in that school side, Dattoli is adamant his exposure to high-level footy from a young age was crucial in developing his capability of impacting success, no matter the tenure he had in a team.

“If Nick was there in Year 9, I’m guessing he would’ve played a handful of games, making sure we didn’t put him in positions where he could’ve got hurt because you come up against some big Year 12 boys,” he said.

“But it just builds your confidence knowing that you can play a role surrounded by older bodies who can support you.

“He would’ve found himself at one stage being tackled by (Caleb) Serong for example at Geelong Grammar and come out of that tackle and gone ‘that’s not that bad’.

“It just builds confidence and that’s why you got Nick with how comfortable he was stepping into AFL footy from day dot because he always played up in age groups.

“I wish more kids would do it … some kids are really capable of doing it but it’s not for everyone and Nick was completely capable – he’s watched footy his whole life and his footwork is elite, so he was able to navigate and dance his way out of traffic all the time.”

Phillips, who was on an adjacent journey as a Caufield Grammar student as part of the APS system, said it was a confluence of factors that set Daicos apart from his cohort and since arriving on the AFL stage.

While there are certain pathways and programs that Daicos was afforded the opportunity to be part of, not to mention his genetics, Phillips is adamant there is a competitiveness that resides in him that the game has rarely seen. From the first time they came up against each other before they were teenagers, it was evident to him that there was no stone Daicos was going to leave unturned.

“It doesn’t just start when you get drafted, so there’s no doubt he would’ve put in the work growing up. He’s so competitive in the way he trains and you see that in the way he plays,” he said.

“There’s no doubt there was that element to him at a young age. He probably had some elite natural ability through the influence of his dad and watching footy growing up or just genetics and his ability to move.

“But then you don’t make it as far as he has if you don’t have the nurture side and being in positive environments and having good people around you. Then to lean into that and use it to your advantage and grow to be a professional is the impressive part.

“Doing your recovery, your nutrition – there’s rarely players that achieve what he’s achieved without that level of professionalism.

“Being in the Collingwood academy would’ve helped, being in the Oakleigh Chargers system, going to a good school like Carey (Grammar), that would’ve moulded him into the person and player that he is today.”

Phillips alludes to the Oakleigh Chargers there, a team they were due to link up at as teammates in 2020 after years of playing against each other. But the pandemic derailed those plans, with Phillips’ draft year and Daicos’ bottom-age season thwarted before it even got started.

The next season in 2021, while not as bad as the year prior, wasn’t a traditional campaign either, with both cancelled matches and injuries restricting Daicos to just five games with the Chargers. While it meant the best of him couldn’t be seen at the peak of the junior level, there was no doubt in his Chargers and Vic Metro coach Jason Davenport’s mind that he was right at the top of his draft class.

“The first time I came across him was when I got the role at Oakleigh actually, so it was obviously on the backend of some interrupted Covid stuff in 2020 and I stepped into that role and Nick like everyone else had had a pretty interrupted few years,” Davenport said.

“There was a couple of niggles he had and also a couple of interruptions with the schedule due to Covid and that included the Vic Metro side.

“I think we only played the one game which was a trial game against Vic Country at Windy Hill and I reckon he had 40 possessions and kicked a goal.

“He finished school and then was readying himself awaiting the draft stuff to take place and preparing himself for that and it was a bit of a unique year actually his draft year.”

Even as early as his second season in the AFL, the Pies’ number 35 was subject to significant attention from the opposition, if not a full blown tag. But it has rarely perturbed him, having dealt with the prospect since even his days in the YJFL.

Davenport, who nurtured some of the game’s emerging stars including Sam Darcy and George Wardlaw during his time at the Chargers in the early 2020s, said it was Daicos’ ability to stay committed to the task of winning regardless of the circumstances that put him in the top echelon of players around the competition and that his endeavour and resilience was built over heightened attention as a junior.

“I know that it sounds cliché, but Nick is the ultimate competitor. People talk about his polish and ball-use and control, but I think his greatest attribute by far is his want or will to win,” he said.

“That comes out with his ability to push himself physically and his running capacity and then he becomes a player that is tagged pretty much every week and the mindset coming into that, people underestimate the toll that could potentially take on individuals.

“For Nick, it is just all part of it and the thing I’ll always talk to is his desire and will to win and I think it’s been great to watch him evolve in that space in his 100 games at AFL level.

“Being tagged, sometimes your role might vary, and I know internally (at Collingwood) they’ve probably spent a lot of time on that, but he impacts winning consistently each week through multiple avenues.

“I think amongst all that polish and the running power and the flair is the reality is this guy just wants to win and is willing to do whatever it takes.”

While there’s a host of opportunities Daicos has enjoyed that many others in the system have also seen in their time, very few have the benefit of having an older brother already in the league. Josh, who began his journey at Collingwood at the end of 2016 and a decade on is one of the team’s most important players, might just have been the secret weapon to his younger brother’s success.

For the first five years of Josh’s career, Nick was like a shadow. Not only was he getting experience against opponents one or two years his senior under Dattoli’s tutelage, he was training and learning off players four and five years older than him as well, as he immersed himself in the early stages of his brother’s time at the Pies.

If you frequented any of the ovals around Melbourne’s inner-east during the backend of the 2010s, there was a high likelihood you’d see two Daicos brothers getting to work between the goal posts and around the oval, honing their craft to become teammates by the start of 2022.

“I think growing up, we were always kind of at the park, practicing and having fun with the footy in our hands and then when I got drafted, I reckon he really would have been getting serious about his footy,” Josh said.

“But Nick was always hanging around my mates and I guess that's a little bit why he’s so mature, he's always been around people that are almost four years older than him.

“When I would do my off-season training or when we get breaks like Christmas, we'd always be training together.

“I think it helped him a lot. I think just being around older boys and just seeing the way we train and the type of training we're doing, and he always just loved it. He never took a backward step and never missed a beat.

“Our first game was his debut for Collingwood. That was our first game together which was special.”

It’s a prevalent trend league-wide these days, drafting the younger brother of an already-listed player. Daicos is no doubt the poster boy, with Levi Ashcroft, Zeke Uwland, Ollie Henry and Ollie Hollands just some of the most recent examples of this move – often by the same club where the elder sibling already resides.

Davenport is of the view it’s a resource that can take players to the next level for those fortunate enough to have it, praising the way Nick vicariously experienced every aspect of Josh’s career.

“I think for Nick, growing up around an AFL environments, it isn’t for everyone, but it definitely worked in his favour,” he said.

“His dad’s presence at the footy club and the type of character his dad is too, it meant that there was never really a high level of pressure on Nick or Josh as well, because of the joy in which he played footy but also the way people spoke to the way he played and the enthusiasm and flair he played with.

“The benefit of having Josh as his older brother who’d been in the system for four or five years before Nick was drafted, there’s significant benefit to that.

“Whether it’s Oakleigh Chargers, Vic Metro or a Collingwood academy, they’re just resources – the individual is the one that needs to grab that stuff by the throat and make the most of it.

“I think Nick was always destined to be great because of how he applied himself to everything.”

Destiny is something Phillips feels strongly about when talking about Daicos too.

Better placed than most to assess having grown up in his orbit, Phillips indicated that the self-belief that Daicos was imbued with right throughout their journey acted as the cherry on top to all the wunderkind’s hard work to achieve his dreams.

“He always had this confidence about him that you felt like he knew he was going to have a career in the AFL and be successful,” he said.

“That was with the way he played and the way he was with ball in hand, but also with the way he walked around and in how he engaged with people.

“It’s almost like mentally it didn’t affect him that there was a jump from Under 18s to being an AFL player, he was just playing like he did as a kid and having fun.

“That shows a lot of confidence and self-belief, which you need to be good at anything in life, and he clearly has an extreme level of that and it doesn’t waver depending on the situation.

“Full props to him in the way that he’s attacked his footy and his love for it. He should be proud of what he’s achieved so far … it’s been a pretty cool journey for people to watch, myself included.”

It’s a sentiment that Davenport echoes on the eve of his former star’s 100^th AFL game. He’s not surprised that there’s already three All Australian blazers, a Copeland Trophy and a premiership medal in his cabinet, confident his mentee would’ve had those achievements in his sights from the outset of his career.

There’ll be more to come no doubt, Davenport said, with the 23-year-old only just getting started in his pursuit of greatness.

“We’re 100 games in but it’s scary to think there’s still so much room for growth for him as a player and I’m sure he’s eager to see how great he can be,” he said.

“That’s what separate the good players from the greats. Everyone matures at different levels mentally and physically and everyone’s journey is very different in those early years.

“I think personalities and so many factors come into play but for Nick, he looked at all the lenses that he could and it was always about becoming the best player he could be.

“There’s a level of confidence required for that and some people get a bit uncomfortable with that at different stages, particularly in the Australian culture. But the reality is if you want to be great, you have to have a level of self-belief that’s healthy and I think Nick’s got the balance really right.

“He has a great level of confidence in his own game, he has a great level of confidence and support in his program no doubt and for him, he’ll carry himself with certain expectations that are higher than anyone else’s that can be said anyway.

“That’s where Nick was always destined to have immediate success. He wasn’t ever going to sit back and take his time to embrace the program, he was always going to step in and have an impact from the get-go.”