Some AFL Grand Final match-ups are more mundane than others. But this year's premiership play-off between Sydney and Brisbane certainly isn't that.
We haven't had a Grand Final between two non-Victorian teams since 2006. This is also the first in which both teams will be from non-heritage states. That on its own has lent itself to the "novelty" tag which has had a fair workout already this week.
But it's also a misnomer. Because this Grand Final is far from a novelty. Indeed, if you're after an appropriate symbol of the shift of power in AFL football in the modern era, this clash is your baby.
And it's not just about any immediate presence of the Swans and Lions and simultaneous absence of those traditional old so-called heavyweights like Carlton, Collingwood and Essendon, either. It's about how Sydney and Brisbane stay not only competitive but challenging for flags year after year in an increasingly volatile competition.
There's nothing novel about two teams which are continually near the top of the ladder facing off in a Grand Final. Perhaps the only surprise is that it hasn't happened sooner.
We're pretty familiar by now with Sydney's near three-decade long stint as a consistently strong football team. But it's only Brisbane's failure to yet land a premiership from this spell which has led to its status as a genuine powerhouse of the AFL being a little undersold.
How much? Well, consider that the Lions, in six seasons now since their 2019 rise up the ladder in Chris Fagan's third season as coach, have won more games than any other club, four more during the home and away rounds, and as many finals (eight) even as the perennial finals player Geelong.
That last point is an even bigger tick when you consider that by the end of 2021, Brisbane's finals record under Fagan was a miserable 1-5 (it's now 8-7). Or that the Lions are the first team to start a season 0-3 and reach a Grand Final since North Melbourne in 1976. Or that they're the only one of 71 teams since 2000 to begin a season 0-3 and make it past the semifinals.
Richmond has come (and left a huge impression) during Brisbane's ascent but gone again, Collingwood and Melbourne have been up and down, West Coast has scaled the heights and traversed barely fathomable lows. But Brisbane remains a contender. And as for the Swans ...
Those of us veterans of the football world who were witness to some of the early struggles of the transplanted South Melbourne still shake our heads sometimes at the scale of the turnaround.
Just how did a club which was on the bones of its backside in 1993 (without resources, facilities, decent players and at one stage without a win for 26 consecutive games) make it to a Grand Final in 1996, and then in 29 seasons (including that one) missed out on finals just five times, won two premierships, played in seven Grand Finals and nine preliminary finals?
Former Sydney coach Paul Roos used to talk often about Sydney's need to remain consistently competitive in order to maintain interest in the harbor city dictating its recruiting. That, incidentally, also suited his own natural scepticism towards the effectiveness of the national draft.
But it helped sustain a template which has been refined (and yes, the Swans' academy has helped) to a near-perfect state in which talented youth (Isaac Heeney, Errol Gulden and Chad Warner the obvious examples) has over the years been delivered in equal measures alongside senior players traded in (like Brodie Grundy) or delisted or unrestricted free agents (like James Jordon), allowing the Swans to regenerate whilst remaining a genuine contender.
Brisbane's turnaround from the horror years of 2010-17, when in eight seasons it finished no higher than 12th and suffered the humiliation of five feted draft choices -- Elliot Yeo, Jared Polec, Sam Docherty, Billy Longer and Patrick Karnezis -- all going home at the end of 2013, is not a lot less remarkable than the Swans' story.
Once installing an AFL-backed chief executive in Greg Swann at that lowest point, then settling on what was seen initially as a left-field choice as senior coach in Fagan (who hadn't played VFL or AFL senior football), Brisbane has never deviated from its carefully-constructed path of development and improvement.
Like the Swans, Brisbane needs to keep winning not only for pride, but for its sustained health in non-heritage territory. But the proof is in the pudding. Between 2014-18, the Lions never reached an average home crowd figure of more than 20,000.
Since then (excluding the COVID-affected years of 2020-21) those home crowd averages have climbed to 24,000, then 25, 27 and 29,000 this season.
In Sydney's darkest days between 1990-94, the Swans averaged fewer than 10,000 fans at their home games four years out of five. But for the last decade (again excepting 2020-21) that average has exceeded 30,000, and this year reached an all-time high of more than 38,000.
So consistent is that interest in Sydney and Brisbane these days, even in rugby league-dominated territory, that it's an interesting hypothetical to ask whether the market for both could now actually withstand a concerted rebuild and a few seasons of poor on-field performances.
But that might also be a moot point given how well the Swans and now the Lions manage to keep ahead of a large and ultra-competitive pack of rivals on as well as off the field.
They may both reside in places which once weren't automatically associated with Australian football. But far from being a novelty, it's they who are the true heavyweights of the AFL these days, and one of whom will be suitably rewarded for that sustained excellence come about 5.15pm on Saturday afternoon.