IT ALWAYS takes something special to lure Melbourne's highest profile football journalists to a mere press conference. Usually it's bad news – a player has fallen foul of his club; a coach or official is being shown the door.

On Tuesday, many of the city's foremost sporting scribes made their way to Moorabbin, not to probe into scandal but rather to celebrate a career.

Robert Harvey, a man who by the end of this season will have played more AFL/VFL games than all but two others, was calling it quits.

For the first time in 21 years, the Saints will run out in 2009 without the number 35 amongst their ranks. Harvey is retiring at season's end, adding at least another four games to the 376 he has already played.

Harvey delivered the announcement as he has played his career – undemonstrably.

"I’m sure it’s no surprise to many but I’d just like to announce my retirement effective at the end of the season, whenever that may be for us," he said.

"I’m very happy and honoured to have stretched my career out as long as I did."

Perhaps it is this attribute – the quietness, the lack of show – that has sometimes kept Harvey from being ranked with other greats of his era: Buckley, Voss, Hird.

But few accolades have escaped the running man from Moorabbin. Like Buckley, he has not won a premiership but his list of decorations is as long as anyone's: All-Australian, best and fairest, EJ Whitten Medallist, Michael Tuck Medallist, Brownlow Medallist. Twice.

By any measure, Harvey is a great – one of the all-time best, and perhaps the greatest Saint ever.

But when asked for a highlight, it wasn't an individual honour that he nominated.

"The games that stand out are the big games – the finals – and I've been lucky to play in 13 or 14 finals games.

"The one that stands out for me most is the prelim final in '97 – that feeling, knowing you're going to the big dance ... that feeling of knowing you're in there is probably something I'll never forget. Hopefully, we can still feel that this year.

"This is the last opportunity to play finals footy – that's all I'm playing for."

The drive for on-field success has never left Harvey, and has fired football's most remarkable motor since he debuted – either by accident or design on the exact date he announced his retirement –in 1988.

"It has never become a chore," he said of the preparation required to compete at the elite level.

"Pre-season is something I have always been able to tick off as something that I enjoy. I might still actually do pre-season and not play."

Coach Ross Lyon and wife Danielle flanked Harvey at Tuesday's announcement and Lyon laughed more than Danielle at the quip.

Perhaps, after so long living with the rigours of AFL football, she didn't find the joke that funny.

There were no tears – this was Robert Harvey after all – but there was emotion. Sadness, of course. Poignancy too.

"I share a locker next to Jack Stevens now, who comes in every day and takes his school uniform off and puts his bag down, and that was me," said Harvey.

"Being next to him has been good this year because it has ignited my memories of that. I’ll never divorce myself of footy because it is all that I know. The footy club is something that I’ll always be connected to."

The conference ended with an unusually long silence. Harvey, obligingly, waited for the next question. It never came. The man who is synonymous with St Kilda smiled and stood. The assembled journalists, players and club officials applauded.

Almost. As Harvey and his coach reminded the audience on several occasions throughout the half-hour, the season for St Kilda holds some promise yet.

"Our season is still alive," Lyon said. "It's not the end for Robert."

Seven of Harvey's teammates stood to the side, listening to those words, perhaps planning to keep the AFL's longest career lingering a while yet.

The views in this article are those of the author and not necessarily those of the clubs or the AFL.