“I think it was the morning of the parade, I had Scott Pendlebury come up to me and say ‘when you’re holding the cup, just be the last one to hold it’, and then he just walked off.”

Darcy Moore awoke on the morning of September 29 last year with the knowledge he only had one more sleep until his first Grand Final, a moment he had waited his whole life for.

Smile on his face, he found his favourite pair of sunglasses and headed into the Grand Final parade hoping to enjoy the day, basking in the sun amongst thousands of fans.

But as a first-year captain, heading into his maiden appearance in the biggest game of the year, there was a story of legend that was shared that altered his thinking.

Revealing a half light-hearted, but also half serious interaction he had with the man to last captain the Club on Grand Final day in the Club’s new documentary Take the Steps, Moore said he was left puzzled about a new responsibility he had only just learned of.

“I think it was the morning of the parade, I had Scott Pendlebury come up to me and say ‘when you’re holding the cup, just be the last one to hold it’, and then he just walked off,” Moore said.

“I’ve not heard of it, I didn’t know about it, I didn’t know what it meant, I didn’t know the story of this stupid superstition everyone has.

“Anyway, I followed up with Scott and he said he didn’t care about it in 2018, so he was like ‘don’t make the same mistake that I did’.

“I should be enjoying then 100s of 1000s of screaming fans and the excitement of my first Grand Final parade and just revelling in that, but all I could think was ‘don’t let go’.”

Moore’s Coach Craig McRae was aware of the superstition too, remembering when he first heard it over two decades ago.

“We got shared a story from Tony Shaw years and years ago when I was at Brisbane about how much he wanted the premiership cup,” he said.

“When they gave it to him the day before in the parade, he wasn’t going to let it go.

“And here we are 20 years later the story’s been told to Darcy, ‘don’t let go of the cup Darcy, don’t let go of it’.”

As the two captains shared the stage, all eyes were on Moore’s left hand.

But Moore’s was on the right hand of his opposing skipper Harris Andrews, hoping to hold the cup for just that split second longer.

“I could feel my teammates just watching me with these eagle eyes just being like ‘don’t let go’,” Moore said.

“Watching Harris Andrews’ hand, he let go first. But then everyone leaves the stage and we’re told we have to hold the cup again for a photo shoot.

“So, we do the photoshoot and we have to take the cup to the press conference, so we’re both two grown men walking side by side holding this thing walking awkwardly.

“The AFL girl said ‘you can both take the cup to the press conference’ and Harris said ‘oh I’m not doing the press conference, Lachie (Neale) is’…so I just walked off with the cup.

“As soon as that happened, I gave it away and my job was done.”

History will say the superstition has survived another year, but it will forever be what Moore remembers his first Grand Final Parade for.