There are few higher tributes that can be paid to a footballer than to be voted their team’s best player in a finals series.

That says you stand up when it matters most - when the battle is at its fiercest and the stakes are highest. There is no better measure of a player’s ability to play well in big games.

At Collingwood, the trophy for Best Player in a Finals Series is named after one of our greatest figures, Bob Rose. The award itself was first presented as early as 1926, and Rose’s name was added to it in 1988. It has been won by many of the club’s biggest names, including Syd Coventry, the Collier brothers, Len Thompson, Des Tuddenham, Nathan Buckley, Gavin Brown, Peter Daicos, Scott Pendlebury and Dane Swan.

With the Pies back in September action again, it seems like the perfect time to pay tribute to some of those who have won this award over the years.

To see more on the Bob Rose Award, including a full list of winners, check out the page on Collingwood Forever.

If you had to choose one game as a template to explain what Paul Licuria meant to the Collingwood Football Club, it would impossible to go past a memorable September night in Adelaide in 2002.

It came in the Magpies' Qualifying Final against Port Adelaide, at the old Football Park, when he helped orchestrate one of the biggest upsets in finals history.

In a game against the minor premier, and in the absence of Collingwood's injured skipper Nathan Buckley, Licuria turned in a masterclass performance.

As the reigning Copeland Trophy winner, and well on his way to a second, he was already valued immensely by his teammates and the Magpies' faithful. But his performance in his first final that night left any impartial observers in little doubt as to his role as the heart and soul of that Collingwood team.

Licuria had the rare capacity to find the ball, having a career-best 40 disposals that night, shutting out Josh Francou, who franked the form a few weeks later when he finished runner-up in the Brownlow Medal. In seven consecutive seasons, he had more than 450 disposals in a year.

His disposal efficiency wasn’t his strength in his early years, but he painstakingly worked on making it an asset, not a weakness.

His pressure was elite; his tackling ferocious. He was, by his own confession, not the most gifted of players. But he worked harder than most, and through sheer hard work and a fierce determination, he built a tank that produced a capacity to keep running when others couldn't.

Above all, he was selfless, always doing things for the sake of the side rather than for his own benefit, and aiming wherever possible to improve those around him.

"If we all had a set of values to live by, Paul Licuria would be a ten out of ten," Buckley told Champions of Collingwood. "There was a little bit of self doubt early and question marks about whether he was good enough, but through sheer will and hard work, he created a mindset that underpinned the way he went about things."

"Once he had that belief system ... there was absolutely no stopping him."

Best finals performers: Ken Turner.

Licuria had grown up as a Collingwood supporter, playing for Keon Park Stars. In a different age, he would have been residentially zoned to Collingwood, but in the drafting era, he was snapped up by Sydney as pick No. 24 in the 1995 National Draft.

He had already shown the level of his determination by overcoming two serious knee injuries before becoming a Swan.

Having played 10 games for the club between 1997 and 1998, Licuria was "spotted" in a Swans reserves match against Collingwood by coach Tony Shaw, after a none-too subtle nudge from his former Swans teammate and friend Anthony Rocca.

Licuria was traded to Collingwood ahead of the 1999 season, and played 13 games that season, with his 28-disposal performance against West Coast in round 18 earning a Rising Star nomination.

In his third season - 2001 - Licuria took his game to a higher plain. He played every match and surprised many outside the club when he won the Copeland Trophy, knocking off Buckley, drawing some criticism from the likes of Mike Sheahan, who described him as an "honest toiler".

No one was saying that a year later, after his extraordinary finals performance against the Power, and winning a second consecutive Copeland Trophy.

He wasn't simply stopping players anymore, as he did with the likes of Jason Akermanis and Andrew McLeod, he was also hurting them back the other way.

"I knew I had to do my best to not only stop players, but to also be doing enough to get the ball myself," Licuria said. "I worked really hard at it. As crazy as it sounds now, I enjoyed pushing myself to see how far I could go in testing myself."



Paul Licuria grapples with Andrew McLeod in round 14, 2002.

Licuria wasn't afraid to show how much it all meant to him. The image of him, arm-in-arm with Mick Malthouse, crying uncontrollably after the 2002 Grand Final loss remains one of the rawest images in Australian football.

"I think that moment showed how tight we were as a group and what it meant to us," Licuria said of the nine-point 2002 Grand Final loss, after a campaign that won him the club’s best finals player.

He was a member of the club's losing Grand Final side in 2003, too, finishing fourth in the best-and-fairest that year while winning best clubman honours.

Licuria was runner-up in the Copeland Trophy in 2004. He barely missed a game across six-and-a-half seasons, fronting up to any challenge that was thrown at him.

As his career wore on, though, that trademark resilience he had become renown for loosened a little, as his well-travelled body began to fail him for the first time.

A calf injury restricted him to only 11 games in 2007, and it brought about an emotional retirement, announced at the Copeland Trophy that night.

As he later explained: "For my skill set, I had to react as quickly as my opponents and I felt like that wasn't happening. It dropped off pretty quickly."

Fittingly, for someone so connected to the club, Licuria has never really left Collingwood. In various roles over the years – as a VFL player assisting the young group, as a midfield and development coach, and more recently, as a board member, the kid who grew up barracking for the Black and White is still giving back to the club.

He wouldn’t have it any other way.