A SEPTEMBER match between Geelong and St Kilda has been an event waiting to happen since the pair burst from the Victorian pack at the start of 2004.

Back then, when the pre-season competition was still played as though it meant something, and the winner was awarded the voluminous Wizard Cup, St Kilda and Geelong met in a memorable final. This afternoon's game at the MCG is the September contest that was promised five autumns ago.

There was about that 2004 event a sense of hope and scarcely suppressed expectation. Although the combatants had finished the previous season no higher than 11th (St Kilda) and 12th (Geelong), these were two long-suffering Victorian clubs poised for success. Each in its own way had developed a playing list to put it among the contenders in the years ahead.

Already there was rivalry. At the first bounce of that pre-season final, Brent Guerra, then with the Saints, picked off Cameron Ling. After the game, won by St Kilda, the Cats accused Aaron Hamill of "cheap shots". Paul Chapman announced that Geelong knew it was the better team and would prove it when they met again in the opening round of the home-and-away season. The Cats were made to look immature in every sense when St Kilda thumped them.

The question then hanging over the two teams was whether they could take what is known in the parlance of the game as the next step.

When they both played in preliminary finals that year and were each within 10 points of victory and a grand final appearance, the answer seemed to be a definite yes. The Saints, though, were clearly ahead of their Victorian rival in 2004. They had flair; the Cats were dogged.

The simultaneous emergence of the pair was made the more interesting because of the contrasting ways in which their playing lists had materialised. St Kilda had spent three straight years on or near the bottom of the ladder and had profited to the tune of five top-five draft picks. Nick Riewoldt, Justin Koschitzke, Luke Ball, Brendon Goddard and Xavier Clarke had thus been brought to Moorabbin.

The Saints also exploited the room in their salary cap provided by a poor list to acquire Fraser Gehrig and Aaron Hamill via the trade route.

Meanwhile, Robert Harvey and Andrew Thompson were still at the top of their game and Lenny Hayes was a mature player. The old fruit was unspoiled and the new growth was ripening nicely. The combination was a mouth-watering prospect.

At the same time, the football folk of Corio Bay were telling anyone who would listen that they had assembled their team without as much as one top-five pick.

Following their four grand final defeats in the seven years to the end of 1995, the Cats had fallen but never quite far enough. Unlike St Kilda, they didn't derive the recruiting benefits of some horribly lean years.

They remained sufficiently competitive to be entangled in the mid-table trap.

By the beginning of 2003, though, Geelong insiders were talking up a midfield of such depth and talent that the rest, they believed, would surely follow. And it did, in the form of the 2007 flag, albeit a few ulcers, almost a sacked coach, and five years later.

If it is hard recruiting yards that make a premiership well-earned, the Cats had paid their dues. While they were blessed with two champions, Matthew Scarlett and Gary Ablett, courtesy of the father-son rule, they had earned some luck.

As Geelong drank premiership champagne last September, St Kilda experienced the bitter taste of missing the finals for the first time in four years. The Saints, who had been gifted so many prize draft picks, had stalled. Their drive for a flag had fizzled.

Yet it had been the Saints who had won that over-sized Wizard Cup.

They were the ones whose leaders stood stony-faced on the presentation dais in '04, making it clear to the world there were bigger fish to fry. It was St Kilda that all that year looked to be within an inch of a premiership and improving by the yard.

The Saints were the ones who continued to be Victoria's standard-bearer through 2005 and 2006. When the flag came back to Victoria, though, it was Geelong carrying it.

In 2008, the Cats have left all in their wake.

The team that looked like the little brother among the two contenders in 2004 has grown to be ranked among the finest teams in history.

Nowadays, it's the Cats with the flair; the Saints who are stodgy.

St Kilda has lost its lustre and fought a backs-to-the-wall struggle even to make the finals.

Across this season, they won eight fewer games than Geelong.

Now, though, the Saints have fallen into fourth position and, by a stroke of good fortune almost as sizeable as that that brought those star recruits a few years ago, suddenly, the two teams are all square again.

Almost five full seasons on, they face off once more.

There remain points to prove. Let the rivalry resume.