It wouldn't be Grand Final week without a fitness doubt over a star player.

This year it is Hawthorn's Jack Gunston, who will need to satisfy his club he is over the ankle strain he suffered in the qualifying final loss to West Coast more than a fortnight ago.

In the first of a four-part series, ASHLEY BROWNE revisits some of the great Grand Final week fitness tests, starting with a Tiger tough man in 1982.

THE GENERAL consensus was that Michael Malthouse was gone after dislocating his shoulder in the 1982 semi-final. 

The finals system of the time gave him a fortnight to try to recover, but his name was pretty much scratched off the team sheet for the flag-decider against Carlton.

The only believer was Malthouse, who was back at Richmond's Punt Road facility the following morning, lifting weights.

"I was going to make every effort to play so I started lifting weights the very next day," he told the AFL Record earlier this year. "Rightly or wrongly it didn’t matter. I was going to try and get there."

Footballers had full-time jobs in those days, so Malthouse did his rehab on either end of the working day. "I went for a swim in the morning and did weights at night. I did everything humanly possible to get there.

"The pain was insignificant. I had played with pain before and that wasn't going to stop me," he said.

Malthouse made such rapid progress that he was able to get himself on the training track on the Thursday night before the match. He got through the skills component at the MCG without too many concerns, but then came the fitness test back at Punt Road, where a large crowd was waiting to see how it would unfold.

The fitness test involved various physical activities with coach Francis Bourke, including wrestling and grappling. Malthouse was a 10-year League player by then, wily as they came and was able to brace himself for the contact. But Bourke was just a year out of the game himself and still in excellent physical shape.

The final part of the test involved Malthouse holding Bourke by the back of the jumper while the Tiger coach darted around in different directions. Again, while watching and anticipating Bourke's every movement, Malthouse was able to brace for the contact.

Bourke then stopped for a moment. "I've got him by the left shoulder," Malthouse recalled, "and the doctors were to the right and I reckon they'd told me I'd made it."

But Malthouse hadn’t let go of Bourke and when the coach made one last quick moment, his shoulder popped out again. He was cooked, and this time, for good.

"If I had have let go I was in," Malthouse said. "I didn’t know that what he was going to do was twist away and pull the shoulder."

"To this day I reckon I could have played," he said. "And with the strapping they do these days, it was a no-brainer."

Malthouse had played every game for the Tigers that year.

"It was shattering. I thought I was invincible, so not to play was shocking." 

Malthouse is put through a vigorous, but ultimately futile, test for the 1982 Grand Final. Picture: AFL Media

And the pain was made worse by the result, an 18-point loss to Carlton. Malthouse says now that while he might not have made the difference if he lined up, "I would have wreaked havoc if I did." 

Malthouse was coaching Footscray two years later, and earlier this year as Carlton coach set a new mark for the most games coached in League footy. So he had some genuine empathy as Collingwood coach before the 2010 Grand Final when defender Simon Prestigiacomo put his hand up and declared he would not be fit enough to play because of a groin complaint.

Prestigiacomo trained on the Tuesday, which was Collingwood's main session for the week, and also completed the Thursday session at Gosch's Paddock. But as the team walked back to the Pies’ training base nearby, Malthouse sensed something was amiss.

"He’s not the most bubbly person,” Malthouse remembered. "But something about him didn't add up, so when we got back he came up to me and said he’d done the groin again. He didn’t think he could get through."

So touched were the Magpies by the gesture of someone Malthouse described as a "beautiful man" that the No. 1 draft pick at the club each year is given Prestigiacomo's No.35 jumper in his first season.

"It recognises (Prestigiacomo) as the ultimate clubman," Malthouse said.

Next: Anthony Stevens' amazing powers of recovery in 1999.