THE COLLINGWOOD Football Club on a Saturday night might not be the sort of club some would expect to see Jordan De Goey at that time of the week, but it has become part of his routine this year. 

Club officials aren’t surprised when they spot the Daicos brothers or Tom Mitchell inside the AIA Centre dotting their I's and crossing their T's after hours, but the sight of De Goey in the pool or on the bike, recovering from one game or preparing for the next, is part of the reason why the box office star has exploded across the first nine rounds of 2023.

This time last year, De Goey was still dealing with the fallout from an off-season incident in New York and about to be forced to deal with a mid-season problem in Bali, all amid the backdrop of a contract year where Collingwood yanked its offer before putting it back on the table.

Now the 27-year-old is one of the most impactful midfielders in the game in 2023, after turning his back on a lucrative offer from St Kilda to sign a five-year contract extension to remain at Collingwood in October. 

While second-year sensation Nick Daicos has attracted most of the attention after continuing the spellbinding start to his AFL career – the 20-year-old is leading the AFLCA player of the year award and the Brownlow Medal favourite – De Goey is producing a season that will have All-Australian selectors considering his blazer measurements.

Only Daicos (51 votes) Marcus Bontempelli (43), Christian Petracca (43), Zak Butters (41) and Clayton Oliver (38) have polled more coaches votes than De Goey (36) across the first nine rounds.

De Goey has produced two 10-vote efforts from eight games – round one v Geelong and three v Richmond – collected eight votes against Greater Western Sydney on Sunday, to go with votes on Anzac Day and against Adelaide in round seven.

It is about quality, not quantity when it comes to De Goey. He doesn't amass the sort of eye-popping numbers that most of the best midfielders do, but he is one of the most impactful stoppage players in the game right now.

De Goey is ranked No.4 for centre clearances (3.3 per game), No.5 for centre bounce first possession (3.9), No.7 for score involvements (8.0), No.13 for clearances (6.5) and No.11 for player ratings points (15.7). 

No Magpie has attended more centre bounces this season – 158 in total – with Craig McRae's side winning the clearance 46.2 per cent of the time he is in attendance, where the injection of Brownlow Medallist Mitchell and the rise of Josh Daicos around the continued excellence of Scott Pendlebury, Steele Sidebottom and Jack Crisp has been a big reason why Collingwood is a game clear on top of the ladder right now at 8-1. 

After producing a breakout season in 2018 to help Collingwood get within a kick of a premiership – he kicked 48 goals from 21 games, including six games of four-plus goals – De Goey has gradually evolved into a midfielder, bit by bit.  

Between 2015 and 2020, De Goey spent two thirds of his time on the ground playing as a forward. That swung to 50-50 essentially in 2021 before rising to 70 per cent midfield time in McRae's first season at the AIA Centre. That figure has now surged to 83 per cent. 

This hasn't happened by chance. 

When De Goey was banned from the club during the pre-season ahead of 2022, he trained with UFC fighter Jack Jenkins away from prying eyes, inside the Absolute MMA Gym in Collingwood, less than 1km away from the Magpies' spiritual home Victoria Park. They ran together, boxed together and have remained tight since then, keeping tabs on each other's training programs, pushing each other to achieve more.

Those training standards have been taken to another level since. 

Over the most recent off-season, with his future settled, De Goey linked up with a running coach, Jack Kelly, who designed a program that has helped lay the foundations for far more time in the middle. He did a training camp in Bali that launched his pre-season, overcoming minor shoulder surgery in December to complete his best pre-season to date, working closely with Magpies high performance boss Jarrod Wade – one of Collingwood's secret weapons – to arrive on the starting grid in March in the best shape of his life.  

There is no secret behind his success this year. De Goey did the work in the spring and summer and is being rewarded for it right now. Simple as that. While all the recruits drew the focus of the cameras across the pre-season, the 2014 No.5 pick turned up each day and went to work.   

Ahead of Sunday's blockbuster against Carlton at the MCG, De Goey is averaging career-high numbers for disposals (24.1), contested possessions (11.8), groundball gets (8.0, clearances (6.5) and inside 50s (5.0), while still impacting the scoreboard with nine goals from eight appearances to go with 1.5 score assists per game.

Champion Data can quantify almost every facet of the game, but they can't measure happiness. Those who see De Goey up close each day at the AIA Centre say you can notice a clear shift in this area since he re-committed to the club. He is a Collingwood person and wants to be a Pie for life. 

With a deal that runs until 2027, when he is 32, he might end his career where he started and by then, De Goey might have a couple of All-Australian blazers and premiership medallions in his possession if he maintains this form.