West Coast were within 50 metres of losing their second straight grand final by less than a kick. Just one point separated the Eagles from Sydney as the ball came spiralling back in from the boundary. Swans ruckman Stephen Doyle linked arms with All-Australian Dean Cox. They tussled for one final, all-important stoppage. Who would gain that first clean possession? Siren. The Eagles had done enough.

From September 2005 to March 2007, the two teams met six times. The cumulative winning margin from those games was 13 points. A sceptic could quite readily have questioned the legitimacy of the results.

But despite the evenness of the era and sharing of the flags, the two wins are viewed in different lights years down the track. Talk of the Swans' win evokes images of honest toilers who snapped football's longest premiership drought. West Coast had arguably the three finest midfielders of the day, Chris Judd, Ben Cousins Daniel Kerr, but their triumph remains tinted — if not tainted — with the dirt of unsavoury off-field events.

But it wasn't all superstars and serial offenders. Even aside from their jumpers on the day, the Eagles had a blue-collar element.

Defenders Beau Waters and Sam Butler were never big names. There was second-string ruckman Mark Seaby, injury-prone forward Ashley Hansen, unheralded backman Brett Jones and his midfielder namesake Rowan Jones.

Perhaps most unlikely of all was Melbourne discard turned rookie turned grand final day hero Steven Armstrong, who bobbed up late in the year to earn his spot for the decider. "I was coming on when Brauny [Michael Braun] got a cramp," Armstrong recalls.

"Sydney-West Coast in those years, it was tough one-on-one football, and you pretty much went until you couldn't run any more and then you had people coming on and relieving them."

The Eagles had kicked seven of the first nine goals of the game, but just as had happened 12 months earlier — as if the teams' scores were being tugged at by a magnetic field — the margin closed, and when Adam Schneider goaled at the 17-minute mark of the last quarter, just a point separated them.

Armstrong had four kicks on that final Saturday in September, but one was the goal that followed two minutes after Schneider's, priceless in a grand final decided by a point.

Such is the role bit-part players can have in shaping the career narratives of champions. If it wasn't for  Armstrong, would Judd, Cousins and Cox have been premiership players? Would John Worsfold be in line to coach Essendon had he gone 12 years at West Coast without silverware?

"I was fortunate to be in the right position when Kerr made a run through the middle and had a couple of bounces," remembers the former Demon.

"The ball spilled out the back and I was lucky enough to get the right kick on it and it bounced through."

Still the Swans came, with Ryan O'Keefe replying with a goal moments later. Then came perhaps the best remembered moment from this classic – Daniel Chick's smother that allowed Adam Hunter to bound forward and restore a seven-point buffer. Even then, Nick Malceski — not for the last time in a grand final — would goal deep into the final term.

So Armstrong watched powerless from the Punt Road end as Nic Fosdike sent the game's final kick into Sydney's forward 50, only to fall seconds short.

"I was at probably the top of the square down our end and it was just congestion, and you needed those inspirational sort of players, whether it was a quick kick or something like that and just contest by contest."

The Eagles hung on. Just. One-all. Nine years on, it seems about right.