Over 20 years on from those first expectations, the Rams stalwart celebrated 350 games with the club at the weekend, with most coming at the highest level.

Despite a 68-point reserves win to mark the occasion, Mentz wasn't as jovial as you'd expect.

"For me, it was business as usual. Personally, getting to 200 senior games was the thing I was definitely most stoked with back when that happened," he said.

"When I started playing footy, I only expected to play a season of reserves, and that would be it."

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A long-time member of Natimuk's rock-climbing scene, Mentz decided to join his local football club in 1998, aged 30, after kick-to-kick with a friend.

"I was a bit scared of footy clubs to be totally honest, but went to Natimuk, and they were incredibly welcoming. They were short of players so they didn't care how bad you were and from then on I loved it," he said.

"It was a very foreign culture to me, and I hadn't spent that much time at footy clubs to know that much about them, apart from my time as a kid which wasn't over positive.

"But Natimuk has been a great club, and I think the fact that it has survived through so many tough years is indicative of the people that are at the club and behind the scenes."

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Mentz rode out the tough years with Natimuk, before the merger, that included a 37-game losing streak in the early 2000s.

Out of that hardship came Rams to the Slaughter, a 2003 documentary Mentz made chronicling the Rams' lean period.

"I thought there was an interesting story there with the footy club and rock-climbers playing footy, all that stuff," he said.

"So I just bought a camera, started filming and ended up catching this three-year losing streak."

Mentz said it was now great to be involved with a firing Rams outfit.

"Even last year, I was getting a gig with the seniors, which was surprising. It was one thing to get a game for Natimuk seniors when we were getting flogged and could barely field a team," he said.

"But somehow we made finals, and I scraped into that team. I never thought I'd see that day given some of the moments we've had over the years."

The Rams face Kalkee this weekend and have the chance to fulfil a prophecy from Mentz' documentary.

"In my time we've never beaten Kalkee in seniors footy, so that's nearly 21 or 22 years,' he said. "It's funny, the very last words of the film are Carl Sudholz saying 'give us a couple years, and we'll beat Kalkee'."

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