IMAGINE Richmond coach Damien Hardwick secretly sweating over the fitness of key defender Alex Rance and forward Jack Riewoldt this week and right up to the start of Saturday’s AFL Grand Final against Adelaide.

That frightening if fictitious scenario is akin to the real-life drama that confronted the Tigers' last premiership coach Tony Jewell in the lead-up to the Grand Final against Collingwood at the MCG 37 years ago.

Jewell endured an excruciating and uncertain wait until only a couple of hours before the game to find out whether he would have defender Greg Strachan and tall forward David Cloke in the team.

In one of the best-kept Grand Final secrets, both players needed painkilling injections for foot injuries before the game and again at half-time to eventually play pivotal roles in Richmond's triumph over the Magpies to win the 1980 flag.

As well as resting an ailing Cloke during the finals series with a severe heel injury to save him for the Grand Final, the coach was shocked to learn mid-week that Strachan had also damaged his foot in a freak mishap at home.

Jewell's regular Wednesday social tennis match at his Brighton home was interrupted by a phone call from a club medico Dr Ben Weiss with news that a barefooted Strachan had stepped on a sewing needle that had fallen to the carpet. The needle was embedded in the young defender’s right foot.

"The foot was throbbing and I could barely walk. An X-ray showed the eye of the needle in my foot and I needed stitches after it was cut out," said Strachan, an optometrist with practices in Balwyn and Blackburn in Melbourne’s east.

The hobbling backman, 22 at the time, was forced to sit out the final training session at Punt Road Oval the next day, and few also realised he was missing during Friday's Grand Final parade in the city as club medical staff worked against the clock to find a solution.

Only three hours before the game, Dr Weiss sent Strachan on a run near his Hawthorn medical rooms after juggling the doses of injections to find the balance of painkillers that would deaden the discomfort and yet allow the Tiger to kick, run and jump in the biggest game of his career.

"I had no idea I'd be playing until that fitness test around 11 o'clock on Saturday. It was dependent on two caveats: that there was no infection and the anaesthetic would last long enough to get me through quarter by quarter," Strachan said.

Jewell said Strachan (at 188cm) was critical to a back six that had already been disrupted by key defender Jim Jess being sent forward to release Cloke to play as a permanent forward pocket.

"I don't know what we would've done if Greg had not come up. David would have played centre-half forward, but because of the heel problem, Jimmy Jess moved there and Stephen Mount went to centre-half back. We had to throw the team around a bit," the Tigers coach said.

Cloke was so disabled by what he now knows was plantar fasciitis (torn tissue at the base of the left heel), that he wore sandshoes for the last home and away round against South Melbourne at the Lake Oval.

"I didn't play the first two finals (qualifying final against Carlton and second semi-final against Geelong) and Tony said he needed me for the Grand Final," said Cloke, father of Western Bulldogs forward Travis.

"I needed jabs (painkiller injections) just to be able to train for the three sessions during the week to prove I was ready to go. And I had more jabs before the game and at half-time."

Remarkably, the 25-year-old Cloke kicked six goals, overshadowed only by Kevin Bartlett's seven. And he reckons a couple of his four misses early in the game can be attributed to getting used to playing with only partial feeling in the left foot.

"As much as you put on a brave face as a coach, you have enough to worry about planning the tactics and you're going over in your mind what surprises the opposition might pull on you. And then to all of a sudden have those issues come up," Jewell said.

"The contingency for David not playing was going to be Brian Taylor, who had played only one game (and had only turned 18 earlier in the season). We had played him on a half-forward flank (on debut) against (Carlton great) Bruce Doull. He was big and strong and tall and we didn't want to upset the team balance."

Footy fate would condemn Taylor to also miss selection in Richmond's 1982 Grand Final team – the club's last appearance before this season – and Collingwood's 1990 premiership line-up. He will be at the MCG on Saturday in his role as a prominent broadcaster.