SOME players who play in a premiership team will have a special, almost heroic, image etched into the minds of those fortunate enough to have watched them.

Think of an incredible Michael Long running goal. A Leo Barry match-saving mark. Or Dermott Brereton being crunched by Mark Yeates, only to pick himself up, vomiting and bleeding, to virtually win the game off his own boot. It's a long list.

The most enduring image of Port Adelaide full-back Darryl Wakelin from the 2004 grand final came in the game's opening minutes.

It was of Wakelin fending off haymaker punches from an out-of-control Alastair Lynch, the Brisbane Lions full-forward.

While hardly heroic in football terms, Wakelin managed to emerge unscathed and go on to outpoint Lynch that day. But the fact Wakelin is heading into his third grand final is heroic in another sense.

Some of the punches — and "attempted" strikes, as Lynch was charged with by the AFL to get around the fact only forearms landed — could have done Wakelin serious damage had they found their mark.

Television commentator, Tim Lane, summed it up: "As Merv Williams used to say, 'They're throwing them from the two-bob seats'."

Wakelin did well to avoid Lynch's fists, but, while he didn't take a backward step, he clearly showed he is not a natural pugilist.

It has never been clear what made Lynch snap that day and the full-forward refuses to talk about it.

There have been claims he reacted to a jibe from Wakelin, or that it was simply an attempt to unsettle the Port full-back that went too far.

Maybe it was something more hard-edged in the collective psyche of the Lions about the likeable Wakelin twins, brother Shane having played for Collingwood in the previous two grand finals against the Lions.

The one tangible result from the incident was that Wakelin showed undoubted courage in the face of Lynch's onslaught. The sort of courage he has shown in coming back from what he and most others thought was a season- and career-ending abductor injury to play last week against the Kangaroos and help his team into another grand final.

Wakelin this week had the good grace to laugh about the incident with Lynch. "You don't wish for that, it's not one of the things you plan for, (I'll) put it that way," Wakelin said.

"I wouldn't say it's a nice memory to look back on because it could have been my last memory of that grand final. It will be a nice one to look back on my career, though, and say, 'That was a moment in a grand final that we won our first premiership', so that's all I look upon that as."

He said he still has the occasional amused look at the video of the match. "Yeah I do. It's a funny feeling whenever I look back on it. I always have a bit of a giggle and look at two blokes who swung a couple and kept missing. Good result in the end. No, I haven't (spoken to Lynch). But I enjoy it when (Danny) Frawley and his co-commentators … bring it up and he seems to cringe a bit, so it is always a bit funny."

The grand final will be Wakelin's 260th and final match, having decided with the abductor tear to make this season his last.

Having won a flag with Port, but lost one with his previous side (St Kilda, in 1997, when he played alongside his brother Shane) Wakelin said "as fairytales go, it probably would have been a nice thing" to play in a premiership side with Shane, but he said their split at the end of 2000 was the thing they needed to "forge your own identity" as a twin.

"He's had a great opportunity at Collingwood to play some very good football and play in some successful sides, as I have coming back to Adelaide. If you asked us both, we wouldn't have had it any other way."