Tremain-Cannon was named man of the match in the Fishies 34-20 win, capping a comeback from a serious pectoral muscle injury suffered in that 2011 decider.

Since then he has undergone rehabilitation on the injury, returned to football, and suffered the pain of losing last year's grand final.

Those battles explain why yesterday's win meant so much to him.

"This is unreal. At one stage I never knew if I'd play footy again but I've put in the hard work and the team has put in the hard work and here we are," he said.

"I've been with this club for a long time and we've had a lot of success over the years but last year's grand final loss to Parkes was very disappointing so I was pretty keen to make sure it didn't happen again."

In a match where both teams had multiple players show glimpses of magic, Tremain-Cannon did all the simple things right.

His organisation around the field and kicking game was almost faultless and he combined with his old partner in crime Luke Jenkins to score a try from an inside pass set play late in the match.

"We'd actually tried that play earlier in the game and they read it," Tremain-Cannon said.

"We gave it another go and I was lucky enough that they weren't covering it as well and I was able to get over the line and score.

"I've played a lot of footy with 'Jenko' over the years and we know each other well. That's a little pet play of ours but it keeps working."