GREG BOULTON took a great club from suburbia to greatness on the national stage - not alone, but with many, many hands at Alberton. From the long-established bootstudder in Alf Trebilcock to Boulton as inaugural AFL president ... Port Adelaide emphasised club before team.

In that time - from the second bid for the AFL licence in 1993 to the breakthrough AFL premiership in 2004 - Darryl Wakelin lived the vision Boulton has repeatedly presented.

In 1994, as Port Adelaide sealed its AFL licence with the "club" image from the passionate fans on the Football Park terraces wowing AFL chief executive Ross Oakley, Wakelin made history. He became the first key position player - as a defender - to win the Jack Oatey Medal as best-afield in the SANFL grand final against Woodville-West Torrens.

"A player can win individual awards ...."

Wakelin's reprieve from the Adelaide Football Club list - to which he was taken as a "conscientious objector" as pick No.11 in the 1993 pre-season draft - ensured he followed his younger twin brother Shane to St Kilda in 1995 (via a complicated three-club trade).

"I left," says Wakelin, "never thinking I would come home. I thought I would stay in Melbourne (as Shane has done)."

Wakelin and his St Kilda team-mates - true to the Boulton mantra - won many games in 1997 to claim the AFL minor premiership but lose the grand final. St Kilda is still chasing that second flag to pair with its 1966 title.

And then Wakelin did make it home, chopped out of St Kilda in the fall-out from the transformation of one storm - the sacking of coach Tim Watson - to the arrival of another with the short-lived tenure of Malcolm Blight.

"On my first day back at Port Adelaide," recalls Wakelin of his return in late spring 2000, "it felt right to be walking back in. I was coming back to family."

The list of significant people in that Port Adelaide family - all of whom fulfilled Wakelin's ambitions to be a premiership player - highlight Boulton's theme that "only a great club can win premierships".

The late Bob Clayton. David Hutton. Mark Williams. Russell Ebert. Jim Nitschke. Brian Cunningham. The list goes on to reaffirm many hands build a great club.

Wakelin is the lasting image of the "old" Port Adelaide with two grand recruiting territories; and the story of change, underlining how even long-established clubs must adapt to thrive in a national game.

Darryl Wakelin was first, born at 11.45pm on August 11, 1974 at Whyalla. Shane was second, born at 12.05am on August 12, making them twins with different birthdays ... and very different football tastes while they grew up at Kimba and Port Lincoln on the Eyre Peninsula.

"I was Port Adelaide, admiring David Hynes, the under-size ruckman - like me until I was 18 - from Wudinna," says Darryl Wakelin, the State under-age ruckman in the Teal Cup teams coached by Russell Ebert during the early 1990s.

"Shane was Glenelg. He followed the Stringer brothers. When we came to town in the 1980s he had to get them put autographs on his Glenelg back-to-back T-shirt."

Darryl Wakelin had established himself as a defender after moving out of junior ranks to reserves teams at Port Adelaide while studying at Woodville High School, but a knee injury - that cost him 12 weeks on the sidelines during his draft year of 1992 - delayed his entry to the big league.

"I had put in a big pre-season and had St Kilda and Carlton saying they would take me (in the draft)," said Wakelin who opted to move to attack in 1992. "With Scott Hodges playing AFL, my best opportunity to get league games and be drafted was to play at full forward or centre half-forward."

Adelaide noticed.

"I told (Adelaide recruiting manager) Tim Johnson to respect my wish to go to Melbourne to live with my brother," Wakelin said. "I was 17. I was nervous. And I was still drafted by Adelaide (in the 1993 pre-season draft). I told them I would not train with them."

While Adelaide waited through 1993, Wakelin did make a switch - from attack to resume as a defender while making his rise to SANFL league ranks at Port Adelaide for the first of his 24 games before being traded to St Kilda.

"Greg Phillips was in his last year; and if Shane could make to the AFL from centre half-back, so could I," Wakelin said.

Port Adelaide - now convinced it was on the verge of AFL entry in 1996 - was eager to hold Wakelin in SANFL ranks where it would then be able to lock a Wakelin to the club's inaugural AFL list, as noted with many other SANFL stars in the making such as future captain Warren Tredrea and Brendon Lade at South Adelaide.

"I was offered a contract to stay at Port Adelaide at the end of 1994," recalls Wakelin, then a second-year university student. "It was a good offer; more than what St Kilda gave me.

"I still went to the AFL thinking what if Port Adelaide does not get in for 1996? What if it is two years (as it was)? The best option was to do my apprenticeship at St Kilda."

Fremantle had listed Wakelin taking advantage of its establishment recruiting concessions for its start-up in 1995. He was then worked through the trade table with St Kilda, needing assets to work the trade, sending draft pick No.42 (Doug Headland) to Fremantle while also releasing key forward Tony Lockett to Sydney.

At Alberton, team manager and future board member Jim Nitschke was not going to let another home-grown talent slip away forever.

"Jim would always ring asking what I wanted to do; he made sure Port Adelaide was always in the back of my mind," Wakelin said. "But by the time I made it to St Kilda I was not thinking of coming home again.

"I played 22 games in my first year. (Senior coach) Stan Alves had backed me in. I was learning my craft without the spotlight you get in a two-team town such as Adelaide. And Stan had a program that was ahead of the curve; he was the first to see the need for a leadership program at AFL clubs by bringing in Ray McLean with what we know as Leading Teams today.

"And then the succession plan with Trevor Barker was lost with Trevor's death (early in 1996); and Stan was sacked - that came out of the blue at the end of 1998."

St Kilda fractured. Tim Watson struggled to establish himself as a first-time coach in 1999 and 2000; Malcolm Blight became the next would-be miracle worker for 2001 - but without Wakelin in his plans.

"I went to the best-and-fairest count with my own doubts about where St Kilda was going; and I left that function without a great feeling," Wakelin recalled. "I was part of the leadership group, but I was not part of the sales team sent to Cairns to pitch to Malcolm Blight."

Two days later all became clear. From Alberton, Port Adelaide football chief Rob Snowdon delivered the confirmation.

"I had been offered for trade," Wakelin said. "I had to work through all the case - for and against going home. At Port Adelaide, I would be coached by Mark Williams - he had been my mentor from 15 after he had made a visit to my school. It felt right. But I had one last test to get through in my own mind. I asked St Kilda for Malcolm Blight's number so I could call him. They told me he was not taking calls. That told me everything."

After 115 AFL games in six seasons at Port Adelaide, Darryl Wakelin was coming home to Alberton in a trade for draft pick No.4 (while Shane went to Collingwood).

"I was with family again," Wakelin said. "I walked into a club of people who were family - David Hutton; Bob Clayton who had brought me to the club as a young kid; Mark Williams ... It just felt right. I was working to coaches such as Phil Walsh, Matt Rendell and Geoff Morris. There is a good group of people.

"But the coach who took it to the next level was Dean Bailey. He believed in what you could do. He made the difference."

Wakelin arrived at Port Adelaide for the last steps to premiership glory - the toughest steps from 2001-2004, the era of extraordinary success in home-and-away games and torment in finals before the 2004 breakthrough.

"The other big gain from leaving St Kilda and coming home to Port Adelaide was I would not have to stand Warren Tredrea for the next eight years," says Wakelin.

"That Port Adelaide squad of that era had firepower. It had a solid defence. We played a fast-flowing game. The core group was hugely talented.

"We had setbacks through 2001 to 2003. Injuries to Brendon Lade, Matthew Primus and Josh Francou certainly hurt us. 

"I felt 2001 we jumped out of the box and those injuries stopped our momentum.

"In 2002, we had our best year ... and then the team balance was rocked by injuries," added Wakelin who was part of the injury crisis after having his jaw broken off the ball in the second Showdown of the season. "We did not have enough momentum that year.

"What we also lacked was the hardness that ultimately was answered by recruiting Damien Hardwick and Byron Pickett. They made us tougher.

"By 2003, Chad Cornes was at centre half-back. We now had a defence that was going to be hard to crack - Cornes, Matthew Bishop and I.

"What we really needed - against all the negativity of the choker's tag - was belief from real momentum. We generated both - belief and momentum - from halfway through the '04 season.

"You start every season thinking you can win. You always think you can win. But when you start doing everything absolutely right, you get another feeling. It builds into momentum. I felt that for the first time in 1997 at St Kilda. I felt it again in 2004.

"David Pittman was on our coaching panel then. He cut through everything that did not matter."

The destiny card was dealt to Wakelin with the 2004 preliminary final match-up with his former St Kilda team-mates at Football Park.

"Life as sliding doors," says Wakelin. "I do hate it when I catch up with my old St Kilda mates and they ask, 'What if you had not won that night?'. Well we did win (by six points). And no-one is taking that away from us.

"We also won the premiership against one of the best teams ever. That Brisbane group is the best and toughest group I have ever faced. They had guys you would not want to walk into while finding yourself in a dark alley.

"We won more games in that 2001-2004 duel with Brisbane. They won more in September.

"We could have won two or three flags during that period. They did. But I will still look at that time at Port Adelaide as a successful experience."

Wakelin retired - with 146 AFL games at Port Adelaide and 170 senior games to his record at Alberton - late in 2007, moving from the changerooms to the boardroom. The club endured the start of a political storm that changed the club and South Australian football - again, in particular with the move from Football Park to Adelaide Oval. The team suffered. Boulton's point is reaffirmed.

"I thought it was my time to have an influence in another way, but I was not ready for that," Wakelin said of his experience as a club director. "I had a young family, I had just started to develop my business experiences (with pharmacies) and I was still thinking as a player who was 'institutionalised' in the team bubble. I was needing time to develop my own thoughts, strong thoughts too while the club was in transition."

That transition allows Wakelin to know of the "old" Port Adelaide and the "new" Port Adelaide.

"I am connected to the Port Adelaide that was a power in the SANFL; I am part of the Port Adelaide that was as strong as it could be in the AFL," Wakelin said. "I celebrated a premiership at 19; I had the same joy at 30 ... but by a different experience."

Different but same by, as Boulton, notes a great club finding success through its people. Clayton. Hutton. Williams. Cuningham. Bailey ... the list goes on. Many people build great clubs.

Perhaps now the context of using Oppenheimer - the story of many hands ensuring success in a team project - as a theme for this year's final series can be appreciated for what it is.