GIANTS stopper Matt de Boer is about to earn himself a big tag: the first League player in 115 years to be a member of the first Grand Final teams for two separate clubs.

 The in-form tagger played in Fremantle's first Grand Final in 2013, which the Dockers lost to Hawthorn, and the 29-year-old West Australian now looms as one of the keys to the GIANTS' hopes in its first premiership decider.

De Boer will become just the third member of an exclusive club of players to figure in maiden Grand Finals for two clubs, and his six-year gap between appearances will be the longest among them.

But in a foreboding omen for de Boer and the GIANTS, none of this trio have a premiership to their names despite a combined five attempts.

The other two cases transpired in the League's first eight seasons, and remarkably the pair in question were teammates on the first occasion. 

Bob Bryce and Albert Trim played in the same South Melbourne team just three times, including the 1899 Grand Final against Fitzroy at the Junction Oval, which they lost by a point. They went their separate ways soon after.

Bryce, who was born in Dunedin, New Zealand, was an onballer/forward recruited from Montague in South Melbourne. He played just 18 League games (five for South and 13 for Collingwood). 

The 1899 play-off was just his second League game, at the age of 20. 

Bryce's move to Victoria Park in 1901 was more fruitful, although similarly short-lived. In his first season as a Magpie he played 12 games and kicked 11 goals.

This featured the best performance of Bryce's career in Collingwood's first Grand Final in 1901, which the Magpies lost to Essendon in familiar surrounds at South Melbourne's Lake Oval. Bryce's "brisk and business-like movements" snared him both of his team's goals, which came in quick succession in the third quarter via a snap and a "clever" running shot.

It proved a false dawn. Bryce played the first round of the 1902 season but was never seen at League level again. 

However, he married the sister of later Collingwood ruckman Bill Walton and fathered two sons who both played more League footy than he had – George Bryce played 26 games for South Melbourne from 1937-39, while turbulent Ted 'Yancey' Bryce notched 106 games and 125 goals with Essendon from 1935-42, played in the 1941 Grand Final, won a club goalkicking award and copped an 18-game suspension for kicking.

Trim, almost four years Bryce's senior, enjoyed a more substantial career than his old South Melbourne teammate. A strong, unflappable defender from Beechworth, Trim played 101 games – 65 for South and 36 for Carlton.

One of South's best in the 1899 Grand Final, Trim captained the club in 1901 before helping the Blues to their first Grand Final appearance in 1904. Carlton lost to Fitzroy but Trim once again starred on the big stage in his last League game.

In 1905 Trim relocated to Western Australia where he captained South Fremantle for the next two seasons, and where he also raised family and remained until his death in 1954. Bryce died four years later in Melbourne.

MEMBER OF FIRST GRAND FINAL TEAMS FOR TWO CLUBS

• Information supplied by Lachlan Essing and Col Hutchinson.