There are three match-ups in Week One of the AFL finals which feature a team that defeated the other in a Grand Final to stop a Fourpeat of Premierships, with the odd one out being St Kilda vs GWS, given the clubs have never met in a final until Saturday.

The South Melbourne/Sydney Swans stopped Carlton from completing the first Fourpeat in league history in the 1909 Grand Final, after the Blues won the 1906, 1907 and 1908 flags.

That was also South Melbourne’s first VFL premiership, and amazingly enough, the Grand Final was filmed by a Sydney based company and serves as the earliest piece of footage of Australian Rules football in action.

In the most famous Grand Final upset of the 20th century, Collingwood, the only club to ever complete a Fourpeat (1927-30), defeated Norm Smith’s Melbourne in the 1958 Grand Final, denying the all-conquering Demons a shot at matching the Magpies’ greatest achievement.

It was such an upset that Norm Smith said this to the Collingwood team in the rooms after the game:

“I hate you bastards! But, by God, I admire you.”

It was such a colossal upset in the sense that it stopped a potential Sixpeat by the Demons, as they won the flag in ’55, ’56, ’57, ’59 and ’60, defeating Collingwood in ’55-’56 and ’60, it was the Magpies’ only win in a 12-game span against the Demons, they had a mere 4 players older than 25 (captain Murray Weideman was only 22) and 65 years later, it also remains the last time Collingwood have defeated Melbourne in a final…

Finally…

Some 46 years later, Port Adelaide stopped the almighty Brisbane Lions from a Fourpeat, winning their maiden AFL premiership in the process, and it remains the closest any club has come to a Fourpeat in the AFL era.

I say the closest because Hawthorn, after winning the 2013-15 flags, only got to the Semi Final in 2016.

Funnily enough, this Saturday will be the first time Brisbane and Port have played in a final since that Grand Final!