At half-time of Collingwood’s game against Essendon, he had asked whether his injured ankle could be injected with painkillers, for the first time in 208 matches.

''What’s your gut feel?'' he asked the club’s doctor straight after the match, and his hunch was not a good one.

"He said, 'you’re probably looking at 8-10 weeks out', and that’s when I realised that was probably it,'' Maxwell said on Wednesday. "I just tried to hold it together as best I could and think positively, but once the scans came back I knew it was time.''

The scans showed Maxwell had suffered three different types of ligament damage when he landed badly 10 minutes into the second quarter. The specialist confirmed he wouldn’t get back this year and, in a way, Maxwell was relieved.

He was playing his first game since round 11 - when a calf problem that was only meant to cost him one match kept him out for six - and made him realise how much harder it was for him now to get back from any sort of injury.

Just the thought of pushing through another rehabilitation program, trying to regain his spot in the team, and being able to do what the team needed him to do, was enough to tire him out.

Maxwell has been defying predictions since long before he got to Collingwood as the 15th pick in the 2003 rookie draft, a player knocked back four times by the Geelong Falcons before finally making the squad.

He wanted to challenge what the specialist told him on Tuesday because he wants to stick around, fight and help his teammates show the world they can do something good this year. But another part of him was grateful there was no real decision to make.

''In the end, if I’m being completely honest, I was almost relieved when he told me it was a 10-weeker, not a four-weeker, because then I would have had to put myself through it all over again, having to fight for every minute of every day to get it right,'' he said.

"Eventually it wears you down, and I’ve had to do it so often. I was actually relieved, in the end, that it was taken out of my hands.''

The things he couldn’t do - and the things people told him he couldn’t do - were on Maxwell’s mind for the first years of his career.

But people saw things in him - Nathan Buckley, Tarkyn Lockyer and James Clement were three of his biggest backers, with Buckley seeing from day one how much he cared about his team - and Maxwell became those things.

He finished a 200-game player, an All-Australian defender, Collingwood’s 45th captain and its first premiership skipper in 20 years.

At first, he said, he wanted to prove people wrong. But over time he felt more motivated to repay the people who had believed in him. ''My coaches, my teammates - I wanted to make sure I repaid the faith that they all had in me.

"Every time I put on the jumper I felt a responsibility and like I had a role to play for the team. I hope I did that, more often than not.''

Maxwell still plans to do what he can. He will stick around for the rest of the season and knows already he will be back in two years, to fill the management position he is being groomed for.

As Scott Pendlebury put it, the 31-year-old should stop playing knowing he made the players around him better, because he did things for them even though there was often no benefit in it for him.

But the last thing Maxwell told his teammates on Wednesday was to make the most of the opportunity they have, for themselves.

''Probably the underlying message was, have a look at your career and where you’re at, and what you want to have. Don’t take no for an answer and don’t wait for someone else to make it happen for you. Whatever you want to do, make it happen for yourself and don’t blame it on anyone else if you’re not achieving what you want to achieve. There are always ways to get to where you want to be.

''Out of all the players I’ve seen come through here over 12 years, only two of about 70 or 80 didn’t make it because they just weren’t talented enough players. They did absolutely everything they could and just weren’t talented enough. And that’s only two. I think all the others, if they sit back and reflect on their careers, would see what they could have done with a lot more dedication and a lot more sacrifices.

''For all our players, because they mean so much to me, I’d hate for any one of them to be in that category where they just didn’t give themselves the best opportunity to make it.''