It’s late September 2009, and the Cats have just won their second premiership in two years. 

The team were back in Geelong after the 45-minute drive down the highway, and players and officials had descended on Kardinia Park for a wild night of celebrations. 

The triumph of 2007 was followed by the heartbreak of 2008, and the Cats, having reclaimed their throne after defeating St.Kilda by 12 points early that day, were ready to let loose. 

Harry Taylor, however, was missing.  

Having virtually shut down Saints legend Nick Riewoldt, and took a game clinching marking in the dying seconds of the Grand Final a couple of hours earlier, he had every right to raise a glass of his favoured cognac in celebration.   

Instead, Taylor was found downstairs in an ice bath, going about his usual recovery routine. 

No fanfare, all business. It’s everything you need to know about Harry Taylor the footballer in one story. 

Taylor retired last week after 13 seasons and 280 games for his beloved Cats; a run that included two premierships and two All-Australian guernseys. 

But a career like Taylor’s can’t be neatly wrapped up in a list of accolades. What he leaves behind is a legacy that is as much a kind of spirit, rather than anything that’s written on an honour board.  

Make no mistake, Taylor was a very good footballer. 

It’s sometimes happens that to those players who become almost symbols of what their clubs are about; it’s easy to overlook how good they were. 

Indeed, in Taylor’s case, you can make the argument that his intercept marking revolutionised his position. 

But that number 7 guernsey now carries with it a weight. It’s a weight of legacy, but it’s instructive as well. No player prepared better for a game of football than Harry Taylor. No player better prepared for his individual matchups like Harry Taylor. Nobody. 

It’s a well-known story that he kept dossiers on his opponents, something that he’d been doing since the beginning of his career. It’s said football is a game of inches. Maybe. It’s also a game of minutes, seconds. 

Every extra moment spent preparing can give you an edge. 

Taylor’s dossiers were his way of staying ahead of the game. Ahead of his opponent.  

But his way has become the Geelong way. 

Preparation, determination, greatness. Not because of him necessarily, but that’s what that number 7 will always symbolise down at Kardinia Park now, for this generation and the next. 

For Harry was never about Harry. He was about his club, and especially his teammates. He was always trying to make the people around him better.

He was a winner. 

Sure, Taylor had more talented teammates; indeed he bows out a week after Gary Ablett Jr, arguably the greatest player to lace them up, but the boy from Northhampton has left a legacy of his own, and a significant one at that, and it won’t be forgotten any time soon. 

Just like his game-saving mark against the Saints in that 2009 decider. It’s somehow gotten a bit lost to history, but it’s every bit as era-defining as Leo Barry’s 2005 grab against the Eagles. If not for that mark, history may very well have been different. 

Taylor bought a bottle of Cognac after the 2011 premiership, vowing to open it once the Cats broke through for another flag. 2020 almost delivered but it wasn’t to be. 

Here’s hoping he’s seen it fit to enjoy a glass in the past couple of days in reflection of a mighty career.  

Have one on us, Harry