WAYNE Campbell's two main football lives will overlap in Saturday's Grand Final, when Greater Western Sydney locks horns with Richmond at the MCG.
The former Tigers captain and Hall of Famer is the Giants' football boss these days, and he joked that he views his playing days "almost like it was someone else".
Campbell, however you spin it, is a Richmond great: 297 games, 172 goals, four-time club champion, dual All Australian and multiple Victorian representative.
Campbell will always have a strong association with Richmond. Picture: AFL Photos
He played in two preliminary finals, in 1995 and 2001, the latter under the late Danny Frawley, without advancing any further.
"It's around this time of year where you think about (not being a premiership player), and there is the absolute line of the 'haves' and 'have nots'," Campbell told AFL.com.au.
MEGA-PREVIEW Who will win the 2019 Grand Final?
"When you sit in the 'have nots', you feel like you're not quite complete, but would I wake up a happier person every day if I had a premiership? I don't think so.
"Would I have loved to win a premiership? I would have given anything I had during my 15 years to do it – and I did, but we didn't get there.
"That's why I'm so full of admiration for what Brendon (Gale), Peggy (O'Neal) and Damien (Hardwick) have been able to do. They've done a bloody good job."
Campbell is in a WhatsApp group with fellow old Tigers people, and the banter – plus congratulations – is already flowing.
"It's probably a curiosity (with others) because of my past, but my family and I have invested so much into the Giants that it really wouldn't matter who we were playing," he said.
"If Richmond was playing in the Grand Final and it wasn't against us, would I barrack for them? Yeah, absolutely.
"But I'm just thinking about how we can beat the opposition, and they just happen to wear the colours I had a bit to do with."
DOUBT ON STAR GIANTS Lachie Whitfield and Stephen Coniglio are fighting to be fit
Campbell resigned as AFL umpires boss to join the GWS cause on the eve of the 2016 season, starting a new journey in the Harbour City with his wife Sarah and their children.
What's followed is an eye-opening experience unlike anything in his time at Punt Road, going from a club that now boasts more than 100,000 members to one trying to establish itself.
"You don't have the history of past players, past premierships, past Brownlow medallists or past anything (at the Giants), so you can forge your own path," he said.
NUMBERS THAT MATTER The stats that could win the flag
"The freedom to be able to do that is great, and you have the dual role of growing the game at the same time, which is something I never considered.
"You didn't consider it as a Richmond player or as a Western Bulldogs coach – that was people at the AFL's role and people in development. But we're here to grow the game.
"We're unashamedly here to grow the game, so you feel just as proud of the little green shoots (as the on-field success), whether it's a new person coming to a game, or a person who never knew AFL footy existed and all of a sudden they're rusted-on Giants supporters."
Campbell consoles injured Giants skipper Callan Ward in round four. Picture: AFL Photos
Campbell has ever-so-briefly allowed himself to dream of a GWS flag this weekend.
"We all think about it and what it would be like to be out on the ground at the end and see the boys happy and smiling," he said.
"I think it's been the culmination, you could say, of the four years of playing finals, but you could also extrapolate that to the eight years the club's existed.
"The hardship that everyone who's been involved in the club over a long period of time has endured has enabled us to form a stronger bond than I've seen – and especially this year."
