When you think of the Collingwood-Geelong rivalry, it has almost certainly been the latter.
So much of what has happened over more than a century between these two teams comes back to six Grand Final meetings - 1925, 1930, 1937, 1952, 1953 and 2011.
For all that, only twice have the Magpies and the Cats played against each other in finals over three successive seasons - 1951-53 and 2009-11.
The first time this happened in the early 1950s has long been regarded as the halcyon years of the Collingwood-Geelong rivalry. But what has happened in modern times is challenging that, with perhaps the promise of even more to come.
Geelong was rightly recognised as one of the greatest teams of any era of football in the early 1950s.
The Cats won consecutive flags in 1951-52, played off in another Grand Final in 1953, and put together the greatest streak of wins in league history, 23 in succession.
That streak of wins - from Round 12, 1952 to Round 13, 1953 - broke the previous record by Collingwood's famed 'Machine' side from a generation earlier, which had won 20 matches on end from 1928-29. It is a record that still exists today.
At the time, Collingwood was trying to stand up to the might of the Geelong, the team that had been its nemesis through the 1951 and 1952 finals series.
Then, in one swoop, the Magpies ended the Cats' streak in Round 14, 1953 - at Kardinia Park of all places.
Having trailed all day, the Magpie side, boasting stars such as Bob Rose, Lou Richards, Neil Mann, Thorold Merrett and Bill Twomey, stunned the home crowd with a four-goal to one final term. Collingwood won by 20 points and the football world had been turned on its axis.
That day sowed the seed of belief in the minds of the Magpies, and they carried that confidence into the 1953 finals series - beating Geelong in the second semi-final and the Grand Final to win the premiership. It was the club's first flag in 17 years and the Magpies' 12th overall.
Sixty years on from that great early 1950s rivalry, the more recent chapter has been just as thrilling and witnessed by a new generation of fans over the past five years.
The current Cats, with three flags over the past five seasons, have all but displaced the '51-'52 premierships sides as Geelong's greatest-ever side in terms of achievements and capabilities.
In that time, from 2007 to now, Collingwood has been a very worthy adversary. The culmination of this Magpies’ team so far has come in the form of the 2010 premiership - which was, like 1953, a drought breaking flag.
But having been thrashed by the new guard of Collingwood in the 2010 preliminary final, Geelong beat the Magpies in two home-and-away games in 2011 and again in the Grand Final by 38 points.
With the two teams set to be do battle again on Saturday night, it seems fitting that the match will be played five years to the day since arguably the start of the rebirth of the Pies-Cats rivalry - on July 14, 2007.
Both teams were on the march heading into that game, with Geelong sitting on top of the ladder and Collingwood seeking a finals berth, and it turned out to be a hard-fought 16-point win to the Cats in what was Ben Johnson's 150th game.
The Magpies worked hard to stay in the contest throughout the game. Teenagers Scott Pendlebury (in his 24th game) and Marty Clarke (in his fourth) were solid performers, while 20-year-old Travis Cloke booted four of Collingwood's nine goals.
Fittingly, 85,497 fans were in attendance at the MCG to see it - the highest crowd at a Collingwood-Geelong game since the 1981 qualifying final.
Incredibly, from that Round 15 clash in 2007 to this year's Round 8 match, more than a million people have attended Collingwood-Geelong games. That's 1,017,824 fans at an average of 84,818 per match.
Four of those 12 matches have been finals, and the first of those - the 2007 preliminary final - still looms large in the minds of Collingwood and Geelong supporters.
In what would prove to be Nathan Buckley's 260th and final game in black and white, the Magpies took the game right up to the overwhelming premiership favourites before going down by a heart-breaking five points.
Josh Fraser was a late withdrawal and Cats big man Brad Ottens was best afield against Collingwood's stand-in ruck duo of Guy Richards and Chris Bryan.
The game drew 98,002 - almost 9,000 more than the 1953 Grand Final and exactly 700 more than the 2007 Grand Final a week later - and the fans cheered as Cloke and Paul Medhurst kicked three goals each, Sean Rusling kicked two, but the Cats held on in the dying seconds.
If the Magpies had won, Buckley wouldn't have played in the Grand Final as he had re-injured the hamstring that had caused him so many problems in the tail-end of a glittering career.
Fast forward to 2008, and Collingwood's famous "tackle game" against Geelong was a remarkable one. The reigning premiers had not lost a game heading into the Round 9 clash, but they copped a rude awakening in the form of 85 tackles against them and a massive 86-point flogging.
Cloke booted four goals, Alan Didak (two goals) was best afield and Tarkyn Lockyer laid nine tackles (more than 10 per cent of the team's total) on a night to remember.
Geelong won the next three encounters - by 27 points in Round 3, 2009; a whopping 73 points in the 2009 Preliminary Final and 36 points in Round 9, 2010.
But the Magpies started to get on a roll the longer the 2010 season progressed.
By the time the two teams met again in Round 19, Collingwood proved itself as premiership favourites by beating Geelong by 22 points (despite kicking a wasteful 14.23) to retain top spot on the AFL ladder.
The win in the 2010 Preliminary Final was even more emphatic. Before more than 95,000 fans, the Magpies were never seriously threatened against a team that many considered as past its peak.
A seven-goal to one opening term set up a big early lead that Collingwood built upon. At half-time it had stretched to beyond ten goals before Geelong managed to peg it back to 41 points at the end. Collingwood had 12 goalkickers - Cloke kicked three - on the night.
But for all those believing the Cats were a spent force, the events of 2011 disproved all that. Geelong defeated Collingwood on three occasions last year, even though one of them was a contentious win.
In Round 8 last season Pendlebury took advantage of a free kick to Cameron Wood to run off and kick a goal just before the final siren. It should have won the game for Collingwood. Instead, the umpire blew "the fastest whistle in history", according to Mick Malthouse, to bring the ball back and disallow the advantage - and the goal.
The Cats held on to win by three points.
It wasn’t so close when the two sides met again in the final round. After Collingwood kicked four goals to two in the opening term, the Cats then pilled on 10 goals within the next half hour to change the game. In the end, the final margin in Geelong's favour was 96 points.
As expected, Collingwood and Geelong met again in the 2011 Grand Final - the first time the two teams had met in a premiership playoff in 58 years.
The Magpies led by 18 points when Ben Johnson kicked a goal at the eight-mark of the second term. But by half-time the Cats had pegged the difference back to three points and looked very dangerous.
Geelong took control in the second half, kicking five goals in each of the last two quarters to run out 38-point winners before 99,537 fans.
This year it was Collingwood's turn. In Round 8, the teams fought out another tight and tense clash, with the Magpies leading at every change.
In the end, the final margin was 12 points in Collingwood's favour, with Pendlebury kicking four goals and having 30 touches, Steele Sidebottom having 38 possessions and Alex Fasolo kicking three goals.
Knowing what has happened over the past five years, it's a fair bet to suggest that we might have another cracking encounter in store this week. There might be a few more twists and turns in this revived rivalry to come.
