At the outset of his AFL journey a decade ago, Adelaide ruckman Rhett Biglands read the words of a player past the age of 30.

"Your career goes by in a flash," the player had said, something a brash, 20-year-old Biglands brushed off as old man's talk.

After a 134-game career snapped cruelly short by knee injuries just when it appeared to be burgeoning, Biglands now agrees it does go quickly after all.

"Yeah it does, I think it's just getting old, it does come to a head pretty quickly," Biglands, 30, said after announcing his retirement from the Crows.

"When I first met Jack Cahill at Port Adelaide I was sitting in his room and there was an article there on an older player who said 'your career goes by in a flash' and I shook my head and thought 'my career's going to go forever', but we can't all be Robert Harvey I suppose."

Harvey he certainly wasn't, but Biglands was able to fashion a fine football career for himself at Adelaide after a not so promising start on the other side of Port Rd.

Named in Port's inaugural AFL squad, he battled groin problems and was cut when the Power were forced to trim their squad back to the usual size, leaving him free to be picked up by Adelaide in the 1999 national draft.

Quickly becoming known for an athletic, physical style since utilised by numerous others, Biglands provided the crash and bash counterpoint to Matthew Clarke's precision tap work and Ben Hudson's in-and-under gathering between 2000 and 2006.

His progression as a player appeared set to culminate in the 2006 AFL premiership, but he fatefully snapped his anterior cruciate ligament while helping Adelaide to a 22-point halftime lead in the preliminary final against West Coast.

He then watched, anguished, from the sidelines as his teammates were overrun by Ben Cousins and Co.

That injury, and a faulty recovery from it, essentially finished Biglands' career, though he was to earn plenty of admirers at Adelaide for his efforts at rehabilitation.

The second snap, which took place during pre-season training this year, confirmed the end of the line.

Biglands admitted he had a creeping suspicion that he wouldn't play AFL football again from relatively early in his comeback from that first knee reconstruction.

"The graft didn't actually heal," he said.

"We had a bit of an incident early at the six-week mark when I had a bit of a fall and the medical staff probably thought there may have been a bit of damage then.

"So we built it up for 12 months but it probably wasn't ever really healed.

"I've known for a while, known almost immediately after my second knee reconstruction that you've got to go and look after your own body the way it's been hammered over the years, you've got to make sure that your own lifestyle after footy is good enough."

There is some irony that Biglands' game tally will now rest permanently at 134.

It is the same number played for Adelaide by Shaun Rehn, whose time as the league's most formidable follower was cut similarly short by knee injuries.

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