Milestones in football come around fairly regularly.

Dozens of players notch up their 50th and 100th games frequently across every season. 

There has even been a select handful that have been good enough to string together careers beyond 300 games. 

However, it is unlikely any player will ever reach the milestone that will be celebrated by one individual at the GIANTS this Saturday.

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Round three sees GIANTS Property and Logistics Manager Ady Schwegler celebrate his 500th AFL game. 

The 46-year-old spent 15 years at Essendon, working 336 consecutive games before taking two seasons off, and has been at the GIANTS since its inception, working 163 straight games since round one, 2012.

Saturday’s game at GIANTS Stadium will be his 500th but certainly not his last.

“Upon reflection it doesn’t sound like a lot, because I’ve been around for 24 years,” Schwegler said.

“It’s a long time but 500 games didn’t seem like a lot, but then when I actually thought about it, that’s a lot of games to have to pump up balls, wash jumpers and pack trucks.

“To do that for 500 games in a row, it goes by pretty quick. I hope I’ve got another 500 in me; I’ll be 70 but I’ll give it a crack.”

Schwegler, whose grandparents immigrated from Germany, started his career at the Bombers in 1995 as a 22-year-old. 

The young Schwegler had just finished his job as a printer, so he spent his spare time at Windy Hill watching his favourite team train.

“The Bombers used to train at three o’clock so I’d go and watch them,” he recalled.

“Sheeds (Kevin Sheedy) used to ask me ‘who are you?’ because he was always worried about media and journalists, but I kept on going down every day of every week and I just asked him if there were any jobs going.

“There were two going in the Essendon Gazette – there was no online media back then – one was called property steward the other was called boot studder so I applied for the boot studder job.

“Sheeds called me and said ‘you’re the guy who walked in off the street aren’t you?’ and I said ‘yeah’ and he asked me to come in and have a meeting.

“There was Sheeds, Danny Corcoran, Mark Williams, Terry Daniher and David Wheadon in the Essendon Social Club and they kept on bombarding me with these questions; ‘can you say no?’, ‘are you mean?’, ‘will you give in to the players?’.

“I’m 22 at this stage and they’re saying, ‘you don’t sound convincing, it’s a tough job and these blokes will walk all over you if you let them’ and I just said, ‘I’m just here to clean the boots’”.

Sheedy, in his gusto, had thought Schwegler had applied for the property steward role. Schwegler got the boot studder job but just three months later he was ready to take over as property steward – a job he’s held ever since.

“I said let me have a crack and if I’m no good, at the end of the year put me back into the boots and I survived the whole of ‘95,” Schwegler said.

Once the season wrapped up Terry Daniher gave him a job as a window cleaner so he could stay at Essendon full time.

He would clean the club’s windows and floors in the morning then migrate downstairs to prepare for the players arrival. He wouldn’t get home until well after nine in the evening.

It’s that work ethic that would see Schwegler - who has an MBA in Sports Management from Deakin University - go on to win the club’s Employee of the Year Award in 2003 and the Coach’s Award in 2004.

It was the dream job for a kid that grew up in the grandstands of Windy Hill, barracking for the Bombers as the planes landed nearby at Essendon Airport.

“It was so bizzare because I idolised Bomber Thompson and Mark Harvey - I used to wear Mark Harvey’s number on my back - and they’d come into the club and I’d be starstruck,” he said. 

“But as it went on and as I got older you lose that ‘fan’ tag and you become part of the club, but I was in awe seeing some of these people and working with the likes of Tim Watson, James Hird and Gavin Wanganeen, but they became friends.” 

Schwegler developed a particularly strong friendship with Matthew Lloyd, Essendon’s all-time leading goalkicker with Lloyd calling Schwegler ‘a close friend’ in his 2011 biography Straight Shooter.

“He just texted me actually and he said the same thing again,” Schwegler said.

“I used to pick him up from school because he didn’t have a car so I would take him to training and we became close. He’s a really nice person, we have a great friendship.” 

His greatest friendship from the Bombers was undoubtedly be with Kevin Sheedy. A father figure to many at Essendon, Sheedy would go on to be called the Father of the GIANTS and bring Schwegler with him to Western Sydney to help build the club.

“I owe a lot to that man, he took a punt on a kid who walked in off the street,” Schwegler said.

“He didn’t know me, he didn’t know my character, so I’m very honoured to have him take that chance on me and I always worked hard to never let him down.

“When he left Essendon the club was never the same. I took a year off in 2009 and worked at Etihad Stadium (now Marvel Stadium), and I bumped into him as he was there for a function.

“I said to him ‘you’ve got to get me out of here, I’m painting chairs’ and he said, ‘don’t worry, there’s a job coming up in about six months’ time and you’ll be the first person I’ll call.’

“I start to hear rumblings about this new team in Sydney and sure enough he calls me and says ‘pack your bags, we’re going to Sydney, we’re going to start it up and we’re going to make it as good as Essendon,’ so I went.”

Schwegler has been at the GIANTS from the very start, he’s seen the club grow from a bunch of kids to a club with three teams.

The early days weren’t easy though.

“It was tough, we had 30 kids who were 17 and you had to teach them to drive,” he said.

“I lived with Adam Treloar, who was a beautiful kid, but he didn’t know how to drive so we were setting up credit cards, teaching them how to pay bills. 

“Then we’re training at Blacktown International Sportspark and playing on ovals that were actually baseball diamonds. 

“It was a lot of hard work but I think it’s paid off, we’ve established ourselves as a strong club.”

Schwegler’s involvement in the GIANTS’ AFL Women’s program is also legendary, with the Property and Logistics Manager having not missed a fixture for the AFLW side either.

He’s made big sacrifices to be part of the program, starting his working day with the men’s program at around 6:30am then finishing around 9:00pm after the women’s program wraps up.

“It’s been great, it’s been time consuming, I’ve sacrificed a relationship to come here at nights to help out,” he said.

“I’ve made an effort to involve myself in that program to give as much as I can to the girls as I do to the boys.

“I just want to give them the same experience as what the men get so they can enjoy their time here.” 

His continued drive to be at every training session and every game for the GIANTS is because he wants to see his club successful. 

Schwegler was in the thick of it when Essendon won their last premiership in 2000 (in fact if you watch the replay he leads them up the race at the MCG before they run through the banner) and is desperate to taste success again.

“That was a good time, that meant a lot because they were a great team and they only lost one game for the year,” he said. 

“They were really good people and it just meant so much. It’d be good to get back there again.

“That’s why I continue to drive myself. This is the engine room and you’ve got to keep on driving and driving yourself to get back there.

“I know I’m not the one to kick the goals, but I know that if I can do everything to the best of my ability to get them there, then I will.

“And yeah to walk up that race, yeah I was the man at Essendon. I could do anything back then.”