When Damien Peverill arrived at Essendon’s main training session before the Round Four clash with Sydney in 2001, he was a rookie-listed player scheduled to run out for the reserves that weekend. Forty-eight hours later, he was in the centre of the Sydney Cricket Ground playing his first game for the Bombers. For a bloke who was forced to work long and hard to earn an opportunity to play AFL football, his senior debut happened all too quickly.

Peverill spent two seasons with the Calder Cannons in the under 18’s competition but while Calder players such as Jason Johnson and Jude Bolton were selected in the National Draft, Damien missed out. After spending the 1998 season with Coburg in the VFL, he ran out for the Melbourne reserves the following year in the hope of emulating former Cannons teammate Mark Johnson by earning a spot with an AFL senior team via the rookie list.

He finished the 1999 season as runner-up in the Melbourne reserves best and fairest and played against the Essendon reserves four times during the year, opposed to the likes of Jason Johnson, Adam Ramanauskas and current Saint Stephen Milne. The Bombers obviously saw something in Peverill, adding him to their supplementary list to play in the revamped VFL competition in 2000. Performing well enough to earn another second-place finish in the best and fairest count, Peverill was hopeful of grabbing a place on Essendon’s rookie list for 2001 and an outside chance of elevation to the seniors.

But there were certainly no promises made to the life-long Bomber fan. ""The coaches didn’t say much,"" Peverill recalled. ""I just went down for preseason and didn’t know if they were going to put me on the rookie list so it was all up in the air. Nobody really told me anything until the rookie draft.""

Essendon did end up selecting Peverill and he was given a taste of senior football in the 2001 preseason, playing two Ansett Cup games. But when the real stuff commenced, Peverill returned to the VFL and hoped an opportunity would come his way. ""In 2000 none of the rookies got a chance so in 2001, I thought the same thing might happen,"" Peverill said. ""But I was lucky enough that there were a few injuries and, yeah, got a shot at it.""

The Bombers promoted Peverill to the senior list after midfielder Joe Misiti sustained a posterior cruciate injury in the Round 3 loss to Carlton. He received the unexpected news at Wednesday’s training session. ""I got told at the end of training – we were all stretching in our cool down and Sheeds has announced that I was on the list for Joey and I was a chance of playing against Sydney that Friday night.""

Peverill was taken by surprise with his promotion but that feeling didn’t end there. Named as an emergency for the Sydney match, the news became even better the next day when he found out he was making his AFL debut. ""Matthew Drain (then Essendon Football Manager) gave me a call on Thursday afternoon and told me I was definitely playing,"" Peverill said. ""I wasn’t allowed to tell any one – I could tell my parents but that was it.""

So Peverill flew to Sydney with the team on the Friday morning, excited about the prospect of his first game. ""I wasn’t really nervous which sort of surprised me,"" Peverill recalled. ""I waited that long I was expecting to be really nervous but getting to the ground, it felt like any other game. Yeah, it probably surprised me, the lack of nerves.""

But once he arrived at the SCG, the surprises just kept on coming. ""When the team was first read out I was named on the bench but in the meeting before the game, I was told I was in the centre on Wayne Schwass!"" Peverill said. He did not have much time to think about taking on Schwass, who was playing his 176th career game, but the match committee clearly felt he could handle the situation.

Wearing the number 45 on his back and alongside fellow debutant Robert Forster-Knight, Peverill realised his childhood dream and ran out for the first time as an Essendon player. ""Before the game it probably hit me a little bit – I was doing my warm up stretching and looking around at all the stands, just taking it all in before the game. But during the game I was too interested in trying to get a kick.""

With heavy showers hitting Sydney just before the bounce, the greasy conditions did not faze a pumped-up Bomber side, embarrassed by an under-strength Carlton the week before. ""Early in the week the meetings were a little bit intense and the post-mortem of the game and training Monday and Wednesday was pretty flat out,"" Peverill said. ""Before the game the feeling was pretty good and once we kicked the first couple of goals, we were right to go from there.""

Essendon dominated the match after a tough first quarter, building a lead of well over ten goals before settling for a 47-point victory. Peverill took the honours over the experienced Schwass, racking up twenty touches, four tackles and an early goal. ""I hadn’t kicked many goals in the VFL and haven’t kicked many goals since,"" Peverill recalled. ""Yeah, it was probably one out of the box to kick a goal and I certainly enjoyed it.""

He also enjoyed celebrating his first game with a win. ""As soon as the game finished I was talking to Mark McVeigh, going ‘it is a little bit different from playing at Windy Hill in front of a couple of hundred people’. The crowd involvement is a bit more than any game I had ever played in before that.""

Peverill went on to play a further eight games that year and continued to impress playing on the league’s top midfielders each week. With Joe Misiti returning from injury, Peverill went back to the rookie list and then missed the rest of the year through injury. However, the Bombers did not hesitate in promoting Peverill to the senior list at season’s end and he remains a crowd favourite, Bomber fans appreciating his hard work and ability to win the football as well as stopping his opponent.

After earning his spot on the Essendon list the hard way, Peverill is now on the verge of reaching a major career milestone. If he plays every game this season and the Bombers make the finals, he will reach 100 AFL games. ""It is definitely something I looked at before the start of the year and figured out we would have to make the finals for me to make it this year,"" Peverill admitted. ""Yeah, something I’m hoping to get out of the way this year. Fingers crossed.""