DUSTIN Fletcher grew up at the Essendon Football Club. His father, Ken, played 264 games for the club between 1967 and 1980.

So, to be entering the Australian Football Hall of Fame as a lifetime Essendon player, a 400-game player who still works for the club, is an incredible achievement.

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"Yep, pretty special," he said. "Especially when you see some of the names on the list. I'm just rapt the AFL made that decision."

By his own admission, Fletcher's career can be divided into two parts.

He was the prodigy who walked into a premiership team while still in Year 12 at Penleigh and Essendon Grammar and became the defensive lynchpin of the most feared and respected team in the AFL.

The second stage was a lesson in resilience and self-care as Fletcher fronted up week after week for a club whose fortunes were on the decline, but whose name was the first to be pencilled on the teamsheet week after week.

Despite his football pedigree and that childhood spent at Windy Hill, Fletcher's initial chosen sport was tennis, and he was good enough to play in various representative squads as a junior alongside Mark Philippoussis and Joe Sirianni.

But footy took over when he was 16 and a year later, after some promising form at school and for the Western Jets, he found himself at Windy Hill ahead of the 1993 season.

And there were no small steps once he got there. Coach Kevin Sheedy waited all of two weeks to select him for his debut game, that remarkable MCG game against Carlton, which ended in a draw when Blues captain Stephen Kernahan kicked out on the full after the final siren.

Initially, he was a ruck/forward and in his debut, he rucked against Carlton giant Justin Madden. But he was sent to the backline before too long and he thrived.

"A big learning curve," he said. "I did my best, but I was probably still a fair bit behind the eight-ball. But I tried hard and was lucky to sneak into a side that was a pretty good one in '93."

That was an understatement. The 'Baby Bombers' took the AFL by storm and won the premiership. Fletcher stood Kernahan in the Grand Final and was a premiership player in a season that he started by getting a lift to training because he was too young to drive.

Football in the 1990s was marked by all the fabulous one-on-one battles all over the ground, and Fletcher has great memories of facing the likes of Gary Ablett (who he didn't play on that day at the MCG in 1993 when the Geelong star kicked 14 goals), Tony Lockett and Jason Dunstall.

"I remember playing the Hawks out at Waverley, and that was a massive ground. I stood Jason Dunstall," he said.

"I remember walking to the goalsquare and, basically, the entire forward 50 cleared out. There was no one else there and you knew you were in for two hours of pretty tough footy, with guys like Darren Jarman delivering the ball just where he wanted it.

"There was no 6-6-6. You had two hours to play and may the best man win. But a lot of the time, you'd have six goals kicked on you and you hadn't played as badly as it looked," he said.

He rarely played a bad game. "It might not have looked like it, but I really concentrated hard when I was playing," he said.

"I really watched the game, the way the ball was going to come in, and how to position myself against my opponent.

"I had pace, and that was my other key. I felt I could start behind my opponent and still have the ability to spoil. And I could kick the footy 40 or 50 metres and hit a target and put a teammate in a better position."

The Bombers were around the mark for the rest of the 1990s and then enjoyed that exceptional season in 2000 when they lost just one game for the season en route to the flag. In a team full of stars, Fletcher won his first and only best and fairest.

"It's a basic thing to say, being at full-back, but you need good midfielders who come back and help, and good defenders around you, and that's why that season was so good. Everyone just played their role," he said.

"I didn't experience too much like that in my 23 years. Just that confidence when you were driving to games that you knew what was going to happen and, nine times out of 10, that was winning. It was a pretty successful year with all the talent we had, but we had some tough boys as well."

Aside from his father, Fletcher attributes most of his football success to his longtime coach, Kevin Sheedy.

"He loved people, but he had that stare and he put that bit of fear into the opposition and sometimes our players as well," he said.

"You just wanted to play well for him, and he gave me the confidence to play my game, which was great."

The second half of Fletcher's career was played in Essendon sides that mainly struggled for success.

But he saddled up year after year, for 23 seasons all told, and played until he was 40 years and 23 days old. When he played his 400th and final game in 2015, he was the second-oldest player in League history.

"You need a little luck," he said.

"I think I had about 20 operations, but they were never big ones, so I kept my speed. And I probably treated AFL football a bit like local football.

"I'd turn up on a Monday, Tuesday and Thursday, do my best, do my weights and go home. I never got too caught up in everything else and it was my way of mentally relaxing through the week.

"But the most important thing was knowing my body. As I got older it was 45-50 minutes on a Tuesday and that was enough; Thursdays would be 20-25 minutes and with that I felt I could get through two hours of footy on the weekend.

"A lot of people laughed that I wasn't the best trainer, but I knew what I had to do."

Essendon and football have been Fletcher's life and remain so. He works for the Bombers in their education program and is the football lead for the club's partnership with RMIT.

He is as dismayed as any Essendon person about the club's recent fortunes, but it hasn't diminished his feelings for the game in any way.

"I've seen success and I've seen tough times, but I absolutely love it," he said.

"I'm proud of what my career looked like and what Essendon has done for me is very special. It means everything to me."