HE COULD have been a premiership contender; now Danny Jacobs just wants to be on the waterfront.

Every grand final, every premiership, has its nearly men. It is a role Jacobs knows well. In his first full year of senior football, the running backman played 20 games for Essendon before breaking down with stress fractures and missing the rest of season 2000 — including the Bombers' grand final canter over Melbourne.

Eight years later history repeated like a late-night kebab. After completing a gruelling pre-season with Hawthorn, and feeling certain his young teammates were on the verge of something special, Jacobs' body gave out in March, forcing him to quit the game.

Since retiring he has watched his teammates march to a grand final. On Saturday, he looked on from the stands as they won it.

"You wonder if you're unlucky or cursed, but then you look at someone like Robert Harvey who played 21 years for only one grand final," he said. "It stings not to have won one but life has got many challenges and you just have to get over them real quick."

As his former teammates bask in premiership glory this week, Jacobs will be readying himself for a different world, preparing for a job interview as a dockworker for Patrick Stevedoring. "It should be good," he said. "I never shy away from a bit of hard work."

After leaving Hawthorn, Jacobs joined his brother Brett at Port Melbourne Colts. It led to a grand final of his own, although there were key differences between the Western Region league decider this month and its AFL equivalent.

For one, the Jacobs boys were on the losing side. For another: "There was an all-in on the wing and a dust-up in the crowd," he said. "I was just walking off and saw blokes running everywhere as the capsicum spray hit."

He has watched the Hawks as often as possible and cannot help but think back to the pre-season, when the flag win was born. "When we came back for training there was this powerful sense of unfinished business," he said. "We were so disappointed with how we'd finished (in 2007) and the players came back in the best shape they'd been in for years.

"You could tell from day one the group was on a mission and they did not falter. There was something special there."

Jacobs was convinced the Hawks were a big chance in 2008 and it was a powerful incentive to keep going. Recovering from a hip injury, he agreed to fight his way back to fitness through the VFL. In the first match he turned at speed and felt a tell-tale pop in his hip. Doctors told him he had torn the muscle off the bone. For the third time.

"They told me I could keep playing at 30%, making up the numbers and just hanging on," he said. "But I knew I'd just be making a fool of myself."

Instead he has taken pride in the emergence of small forward Cameron Stokes, elevated from the rookie list to snag the spot Jacobs left vacant. "He's done more for the team this year than I ever could have and will give them much more again in the future," he said.

Jacobs says the club handled his departure well and offered tickets to the grand final and a chance to sit with the club group. He would have seen young Xavier Ellis wearing his old number and turning in the performance of his career.