A two-time Brownlow medallist and four-time club champion looking to a teammate just out of his teens for inspiration and leadership? It sounds improbable but when it came to Lenny Hayes even the likes of Robert Harvey admired the  retiring midfielder.

The St Kilda champion had just won his second consecutive Brownlow when Hayes was drafted to the club at the end of 1998, and immediately given the No.7  guernsey vacated by fan favourite Nicky Winmar.

Apart from being crunched by North Melbourne hardman Glenn Archer on his debut – a ‘‘welcome to the big time’’, Harvey described it – Harvey said his most vivid early memories of Hayes were what he did repeatedly in training rather than how he performed on match days.

‘‘He was a pretty driven young kid. He had a real appetite for hard work and he learnt that pretty early,’’ Harvey, now the senior assistant to Nathan Buckley at Collingwood, said on Tuesday.

‘‘I don’t think he played overly great footy in the early days, but he really did learn that ability to train hard and see that rewarded in his game.

‘‘We obviously knew he was from a NSW background so we could see the tackling straight away ... and his toughness was always there, but he probably didn’t have that sense of awareness. He looks [now] like he’s had it forever but I think he really worked on it and even that pace on takeoff. He was never an overly quick player but he had that [initial] acceleration.’’

Hayes joked at his retirement announcement that he had not been as emotional informing his teammates as he had been when Harvey, his boyhood idol, delivered the same news to him and his fellow Saints players in 2008.

That Harvey was not shocked at the announcement – Hayes had tipped him off last week during an unrelated conversation – did not mean he was unaffected by it. ‘‘When one of the all-time great players gives it away I think it’s a really sad day,’’ he said.

Hayes won his first club champion award in 2003. While Harvey, a tireless midfielder, does not possess an encyclopaedic memory of his own 383 senior matches he distinctly remembers the Saints’ rise from 15th in 2002 and 11th and 2003 to top-four berths in both 2004 and 2005 came ‘‘on the back of a lot of his [Hayes’] inspirational stuff’’.

‘‘He really was that genuine leader by his actions. That was pretty clear pretty early, that he had that inspirational leadership on the field. He’d do acts that would just lift the team,’’ he said.

‘‘Even as an older player ... I used to look to him a lot for inspiration, even though he was a far younger player than me.’’

St Kilda captain Nick Riewoldt said his fondest on-field memory of Hayes was of the goal he kicked midway through the last quarter of the 2010 drawn grand final. As Hayes marked at the top of the 50-metre arc, commentator Bruce McAvaney remarked it ‘‘might be too far out’’ and was proved wrong.

‘‘What he was able to do to get us back into the game [was immense], and then to go back [and kick a pivotal goal],’’ Riewoldt said.

‘‘He’s never really been a massive kick of the footy, but to go back from outside 50 and slot that goal was huge for us.’’

Harvey, watching that match at the MCG as a fan, marvelled at the Hayes-led recovery from the Saints, who trailed Collingwood by four goals at half-time.

‘‘His efforts and deeds late in that game were [superb]. You probably come to expect it from Lenny, but I was there watching it and I just thought, ‘He really deserves it’. That was Lenny Hayes summed up in the second half of that game, I reckon,’’ he said.

‘‘Some of those efforts where he literally just threw himself at the ball and the player with the ball in that second half was just amazing. He was just going to die trying.’’

Harvey said he held Hayes in the same lofty regard he held long-time teammate Nathan Burke, because both would invariably strive so hard to help their team succeed.

‘‘He’s just an honest player in every sense of the word. He’s that way off the field. There’s no in-between there,’’ he said.

‘‘St Kilda fans will dearly miss Lenny Hayes running out each week and giving his all for that team. It’ll be a big hole.’’