Nathan Bassett will retire at the end of Adelaide's finals campaign with the experienced defender admitting the wear and tear of AFL football is starting to take its toll.
The 208-game veteran has been thinking about giving the game away since pre-season and used the motivation of going on in 2009 as a way to keep his standards at a high level.
But despite delivering plenty of quality performances, especially in the second half of the season, the 31-year-old said he was finding it hard to back up each week.
"On the weekend I was pretty sore going into the game and it was like I can't do anything more to prepare myself to play AFL football," Bassett said.
"I've done everything right to get myself right, it was an eight-day break, and I still feel I can't play to my best level and it's not going to get any better."
Bassett said it was also becoming increasingly difficult to keep up with the tempo of AFL.
"The game has changed so much during my career and I think as a player you have to adapt to it," he said.
"So it's such a running game you need to be a good athlete and I've done my best to try and keep pace with but it's only going to get faster."
The former Melbourne rookie, best known for wearing his heart on his sleeve on the field and being an articulate straight shooter off it, said he was starting to worry about the long-term effect of injuries.
A new father, Bassett said he wanted to be an active parent for his six-month daughter Charlotte.
"I'm thinking about the future as much as anything. I want to keep my movement. I'd like to keep getting paid playing footy but I think my health comes first and that's part of it," he said.
"You see a lot of old footballers, and not so old footballers, with some pretty serious injuries that they have to deal with for the rest of their life. I think I can leave now pretty confident I won't have those issues."
Crows coach Neil Craig said there was a chance Bassett could've played on in 2009 given the right motivation and form heading into the next pre-season.
He thought it was a credit to his long-term defender that he could leave the competition at the top of his game.
"We probably spoke mostly about his capacity not just to survive but to be aggressive and play high performance footy," Craig said.
"We do know from history the game can get you very quickly and that was one thing I did ask Nathan to really think about. If he had come back and said 'I reckon I can do this' there would have been really strong consideration for him to play at our club again."
"The majority was up to Nathan to make that decision as it should be."
"Hopefully he's got five more games, a maximum of five games left in that body and I'm sure they'll be the same quality that our supporters have come to expect and know of Nathan."