Mark Baguley admits to being a little ‘rattled’ when he sat down with Essendon List and Recruiting Manager Adrian Dodoro for the first time.

It was 2011 and the 24-year-old Baguley was playing in the VFL with Frankston.

Just a few years earlier he was playing country football with Langwarrin in Victoria’s southeast.

A career in the AFL seemed a workd away but he decided to give the VFL a crack after some encouragement from the Dolphins.

As his VFL career progressed he garnered interest from AFL clubs, including the Bombers and Dodoro.

“I was working around the corner as a plumber so I came in in my work overalls and he sat me down and the first question he asked was ‘do you honestly think you’re good enough to play AFL?’” Baguley told Bomber Radio.

“That sort of rattled me a bit, you don’t want to sound too cocky … but I wiggled my way out of that question and said ‘if you give me the chance I’ll show you’.

“I didn’t hear from him for about three or four months until the day before the draft when he rang me and just said ‘good luck’ and that was it.

“I got drafted and I hope I’ve repaid him.”

On Sunday Baguley will play his 100th game for Essendon when the side takes on Western Bulldogs. 

“It’s pretty exciting, it’s a big achievement, I’m sure once I finish my career I’ll look back and be very proud to have played 100 games at Essendon,” he said.

“It has been a long road, but it has been a good journey.”

After starting on the Rookie List, Baguley quickly evolved into an integral member of the Bombers defence.

But he concedes it took some time to adjust to life in the AFL.

“It was a big change being semi-professional at that level (VFL) and then it becomes your job,” he said. 

“You think getting drafted is the hard bit but when you make the list you’ve got to compete with 44 guys on the list and try to get a game.

“The hardest thing was upping that professional level, you’ve got to be a lot fitter and I probably wasn’t the best athlete coming into the Club but I’ve worked really hard on getting my body right, being able to compete and have good endurance to compete for the whole four quarters of the game. 

“My first and second year I probably felt a little bit out of place just getting used to the pace of the game and the strategy.

“In my third year is when I really started to feel comfortable, I’d played maybe 30 games at AFL level … I could read the play a lot better and understand what was happening in the game.”

Baguley’s pathway is a little different to most, but tasting the challenges of the ‘real world’, only made him more determined to make the most of his AFL opportunity.

“I had a bit of an understanding of what the real world was about and how hard you’ve got to work to make money in the outside world,” he said.

“Coming into (AFL) footy I had nothing to lose, I just wanted to give it my best shot.

“If I was going to be here for a year I didn’t want to have any regrets that I didn’t try my hardest or give it everything I had, that’s the way I approached it.”

Baguley is a two-time winner of the Bombers Most Courageous Player of the Year award – named after Dons premiership player Adam Ramanauskas.

Each week he lines up of the opposition’s most dangerous small forward.

“You’ve just got to have a positive outlook on the game … they’re always dangerous, lively types, very skilful,” he said. 

“You give them a metre or two and you’re really out of the contest.”

The Bulldogs boast some dynamic attacking options and Baguley will be a key component of the Bombers attempts to reduce their impact this Sunday.

But hard work is something Baguley has never shied away from.

A Bombers jumper may have replaced the plumbing overalls, but his working class attitude remains.