CYRIL Collard wanders around the Hawthorn museum with his family and a couple of old mates from his days at Glenferrie, soaking up the nostalgia.

There's premiership cups, old jumpers and boots, portraits, and team photos from virtually every year, a couple in which he features. But it's when Chance Bateman enters the room that his eyes really light up.

So do Bateman's, the significance of the moment not lost upon either. Collard, 73, was the first indigenous player to represent Hawthorn, in 1957-58. And tomorrow in Launceston against Adelaide, Bateman becomes the first Aboriginal Hawk to notch 100 games. It will be a proud moment for both.

"When I first came to the club, I was aware no indigenous player had reached even 50 games here, so it was a goal of mine as soon as I came into the place to be the first to do it," he says.

"My first year was 2000, so I thought it might come along a bit quicker than it has, but it's always been there in the back of my mind, and to it finally happen is a pretty big deal for me." As indeed it is for those Hawthorn people with a keen eye to history.

Collard had grown up in Western Australian country town Brookton, where the local football club refused him a game because of his race. Undeterred, he travelled to Perth, where he played for Subiaco as a 17-year-old.

News of his skill and tremendous pace, which would forge him a successful athletics career that culminated with spots in three Stawell Gift finals, quickly won the interest of VFL clubs.

Collard trained with Collingwood for five weeks before being wooed by the Hawks. After having to stand out for a year when Subiaco refused his clearance, he finally ran out for his first game in brown-and-gold in the opening round of 1957, against Carlton at Princes Park.

It would be the first of only 13 senior games over two seasons, after which he decided to concentrate on his running, a potentially great league talent lost.

"He could run like the wind and stab pass better than anyone around," says club historian Peter Harby. "But he was very slight and injury-prone. If you couldn't avoid the coathangers in the '50s, you weren't going to live long. Probably that mental telepathy that he had was too far advanced for the Hawthorn sides of the day."

Whatever the explanation, it's fair to say Collard's recruitment hardly opened the floodgates for indigenous footballers at Glenferrie.

While the Hawks made a habit of winning premierships over the 1970s and '80s, their reputation as a WASP-ish, safely middle-class club disinclined to venture into unorthodox recruiting territory lingered.

It's Bateman's success that has played a major role in changing that stereotype. He was the only indigenous player on the Hawthorn list when he arrived from York, in WA's central wheatbelt in 2000. Now there's five - Bateman, Lance Franklin, Mark Williams, Cyril Rioli and Cameron Stokes.

Bateman, part of the Hawks' leadership group since 2005, has made it a duty to take the likes of Rioli, who lived with him for a time after he was drafted last year, under his wing. "Just simple things, driving him to training, eating together every night, having a chat whenever he wanted to," he shrugs.

"Being from interstate, I know how hard it is to settle in until you find that little group of mates you connect with really well and can hang around with outside the footy club."

Bateman did it tough early, on a number of fronts. There were ankle and hamstring injuries. Then a tragedy that might have ended his AFL career before it had barely begun.

It was mid-2001. Bateman was 20, homesick and had played only seven senior games when he was cheered by a visit from his mother Carol and sister Candy, 15, the youngest of five children, and on her first interstate trip.

A week later, Candy was dead, killed when she slipped under a freight train in her home town. Bateman was on a three-day training exercise in Rosebud when he got a message to ring his older sister. He got the chilling news, went straight back to Melbourne, and that night, before jumping on a plane back to Perth, rang his father, Paul. It's a conversation the memory of which still moves him to tears.

"It was just so hard hearing him crying down the phone, that was easily the toughest moment of my life," he says. "I remember thinking how could this have happened to my family. I got pretty emotional, and even now when I think about it I get emotional."

Bateman wanted only to be near his family. He had been back in York for four weeks when his mother persuaded him it was time to return. He did so just in time to play in VFL team Box Hill's premiership side. Even then, he was determined his time in Victoria was up.

"I just felt like if anything like that happened again, I didn't want to be on the other side of the country," he says. "I told the club I wanted to get traded back home, and they did try pretty hard to get a trade with Fremantle or West Coast. But when that fell through, I spoke to Dad and he said: 'Look, just get back to Melbourne, work hard over there and try to be a one-club player.' "

Bateman believes in hindsight it might prove the best advice he's ever been given. "My mindset's completely different. I just realised you can't sort of jump ship whenever hurdles are put in front of you. After going through what happened to Candy, there's not really much I can't handle."

Which is just as well, because in even purely football terms, there's been plenty more hurdles along the way.

Bateman took until 2003 to establish himself as a senior regular, only to be cut down by a bout of osteitis pubis, missing the entire second half of the season.

In 2004, it was hamstring trouble that restricted him to 13 games.

The pacy midfielder looked ready to blossom the following year, Alastair Clarkson's first as coach, when a shoulder injury ended his season.

Despite playing only 12 games, he finished ninth in the best and fairest. His luck finally changed in 2006, missing only one game, and he started 21 last year, including the Hawks' two finals.

But it's for far more than perseverance that Bateman has been anointed by his peers for four years now as one of the official team leaders, though the vote of confidence came as a shock to him.

"It was a real surprise. I don't talk much in front of the group. I get a bit nervous in front of the boys," he says. "I asked Vanders (former skipper Richie Vandenberg) why the boys voted me in, and he said it was a reflection of the way I went about my training and the way I play."

And that respect of his peers has perhaps been the final brick in the building of Bateman the AFL player, having embraced the responsibility in his own way.

"If I see something or I've got something to tell one of the boys, I can pull them to one side and have a one-on-one conversation and try to do it that way," he says. "I'm a pretty easygoing, relaxed sort of fella. You want to be approachable, you've got to have empathy for people's situations."

Bateman even led the Hawks for a day last season, against West Coast in Launceston, during the AFL's indigenous round.

"Just like with the leadership group, I was shocked," he recalls. "But it was such a privilege, and I had a great day, mainly because it wasn't just the club saying it would be a good idea.

"All the boys got around me, I had that much support during the week and on the day, and we ended up winning, so it was great day for me, and a pretty special moment."

Of which the now 100-gamer hopes to enjoy a lot more over the next few years, both individually, and as part of a team seemingly destined for greater things.

"We're not talking about ladder positions, we're talking more about consistently improving," he says. "Last year, there would be games where we went out and played really well, then a couple of weeks later, we'd get belted.

"We all know we've still got a fair way to go before we're one of the really good sides in the competition, but the level of maturity around the club has definitely lifted. We went over and played Fremantle on their home deck, they challenged us late, and to get up and win that game, then come back off a six-day break last week and get up again, I think shows we're on the right track."

As, clearly, is Bateman, after a nine-year journey littered with obstacles along the way. Tomorrow's milestone will be full of meaning. For his sense of belief. For the memory of Candy, whose name is tattooed above his heart.

And, of course, for Bateman's people, particularly Cyril Collard, the 73-year-old former Hawk who will be watching intently on television, riding every bump, all the while beaming with brotherly pride.