WHEN Collingwood defender Brayden Maynard lines up at the MCG on the Queen's Birthday holiday for his 41st game, he’ll likely sneak a quick look at his wrist as a reminder of his family's football history.

The signature of his grandfather, former Fitzroy footballer and coach, Graham Campbell, covers the veins on the inside of the 20-year-old Maynard's left wrist.

Maynard is tough on the football field, like his grandfather, but quieter than him off it and he is emerging as a key member of Nathan Buckley's next generation of Magpies, one with both a combative style and a neat left foot kick that pierces defensive 50.

His skills were on show when the Magpies’ return to respectability began in round nine in their post-quarter-time comeback against Hawthorn. His efforts after an ordinary first quarter drew praise after the game from the coach.

"He didn't give it up. He kept fighting," Buckley said.

That fighting has endeared him to Collingwood fans and made opposition supporters notice him. 

Maynard admits he suffers from an affliction common to many of the game's best competitors.  

"You can call it white-line fever," he told AFL.com.au.

On Monday, his brother, 25-year-old Corey, will be watching from the stands in the 'frenemy' camp, having joined Melbourne as a rookie at the end of last season after a basketball career that took him around the world.

Corey Maynard has played just five VFL games in his football comeback having missed three matches after North Melbourne forward Lindsay Thomas concussed him last month.

He is no stranger to elite sport, having played against future NBA players Cody Zeller, Yogi Ferrell and Victor Oladipo in front of 19,000 people in Indiana in the United States when he was a point guard for Bryant University, a small school in Rhode Island.

He also stared down the nerves that were charging off the charts when Bryant took on Delaware on a December night in 2013 at Madison Square Garden in New York, a highlight of his four years in the competitive American college basketball system.

"We had caught the bus there from our hotel in Manhattan. We pulled up and I was like, 'Holy crap'. It didn't feel real," Corey said.

He watched Brayden's AFL debut, against Hawthorn at the MCG in round 14, 2015, on a big screen in a hotel in Korea. He was there representing Australia in the World University Games, alongside Hugh Greenwood, now a rookie with Adelaide. 

On returning to Australia, Corey played for the Townsville Crocodiles in the NBL before a less-than-satisfying stint in Finland after the Crocs were disbanded. After some honest reflection, he realised he wanted to come home.

"The goal was always the OIympics and I saw that probably wasn't going to happen. Realistically I had achieved everything I could in basketball," he said.

"I always loved footy as much as I loved basketball."

When AFL clubs heard he was interested in playing football again they came calling, with Melbourne landing him as a Category B rookie, much to the delight of his brother.

"I was stoked," Brayden said.

His selection meant the family had another young man moving closer to following in the steps the boys’ grandfather first took 40 years before Brayden was born in 1996, when he made his debut for Fitzroy in June, 1956.

Campbell, who grew up as a Collingwood supporter that went to see the Magpies play every week, kicked one goal in a willing encounter as Fitzroy lost to Carlton, the first of his 151 games and 154 goals for the Lions.

He had already played in an under-19s flag with Fitzroy in 1955.

By the time he finished as Glenelg coach 28 years later, Campbell had an impressive resume playing and coaching across the country.

At Fitzroy he played a part in every flag the club won between its last VFL premiership in 1944 and the 1989 reserves flag under Robert Shaw: the under-19s win in 1955, the 1959 and 1978 night premierships and the 1974 reserves’ flag.

Throw in the 1975 WAFL premiership with West Perth and you can see how the strong, talkative man, who former teammate Bill Stephen joked could squeeze 100 words into a gap most could fit 10, commands such respect from those 60 years his junior.

"We all love him," Brayden Maynard told AFL.com.au. 

"It's been pretty hard lately. We show him love but I don't think he understands as much as he used to, so that makes it hard."

Campbell, 80, battles now to remember what he once did so effortlessly.

However, the physically strong octogenarian who lives in Adelaide with his wife Di, can still bring a smile to his grandsons' faces when he reminds them over the phone they have not yet played a final on the MCG, as he did in his heyday.

Campbell played in three finals at the MCG in 1958 and 1960, losing two by less than a goal, including the 1960 preliminary final when the Lions fell to the Magpies by five points to miss a spot in the Grand Final against Melbourne.

It was his move to Glenelg however, on Campbell's last senior coaching assignment in the early 1980s, that led to the genesis of a burgeoning football dynasty.

It was then that young Shepparton boy Peter Maynard, who had joined Glenelg in 1982 after eight games at Melbourne without a win under Ron Barassi and alongside colourful characters such as Mark Jackson, Peter ‘Crackers’ Keenan, Phil Carman, Brent Crosswell and Garry Baker, crossed paths with Campbell's daughter Donna.

The young pair began dating. Peter laughs when asked by how he worked up the courage to break that news to Campbell.

He had guessed correctly that Campbell was not too fussed at the prospect, but he sensed Donna's mum was a little wary of the young footballer.

"Di, the mother, being the protective one, was more the challenge given our age at the time," Maynard said.

She had no need to worry.

The pair's relationship flourished as Peter's career in the SANFL took off and they eventually had two sons, Corey and Brayden, and a daughter, Karli, in the 1990s.

As the children grew up, Peter Maynard sat on the match committee at Adelaide in 1998, becoming the Crows' runner as they won their second flag, before returning to Melbourne where he was the runner for Wayne Brittain and David Parkin at Carlton.

He also began to coach his boys at Hampton Rovers in Melbourne's southern suburbs, in between the brothers having last-man standing battles under a basketball ring in the front yard of the family's Brighton East home.

One day such battles might extend to the MCG.

But on Monday, Brayden will carry the footballing torch for an understated football family that has seen someone performing on the big stage as a player or coach in five of the past six decades.