The venues, timeslots, teams and performing artists might change but there's one non-negotiable when it comes to AFL grand finals: Mike Brady being on our screens again singing Up There Cazaly.

Brady believes this year will be the 18th time he has performed the song as part of the pre-match entertainment for the decider.

"It's always been a thrill every time [because] I don't get nervous," Brady told ABC Radio Perth's breakfast presenter Russell Woolf.

"I just have a really lovely feeling about it when I sing it because people like it.

"And to have people sing along with you is wonderful, just wonderful."

When the pandemic pushed last year's grand final to Brisbane, Brady tugged at Victorian heartstrings by belting out his iconic tune at an empty MCG as part of the pre-game show.

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He won't be in Perth when the Demons play the Western Bulldogs for the 2021 premiership but will still perform his famous song from Melbourne in the build-up to the game.

"One week a feather duster, the next day a rooster, the clock ticks over to the last week in August and then all of a sudden I'm a rooster," Brady said.

Who is Cazaly and why is he up there?

Roy Cazaly was a champion ruckman for St Kilda and South Melbourne from 1911 to 1927 and was known for taking spectacular marks.

At South Melbourne, his ruck combination with Fred "Skeeter" Fleiter and rover Mark "Napper" Tandy was known as "The Terrible Trio".

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"When teamed with Fred Fleiter and Mark Tandy, I developed a spring that took me well over the packs," Cazaly told The Sporting Globe in 1935.

"Fleiter would shepherd while I made a leap. He and Tandy would cry out simultaneously, 'Up there Cazaly.'"

The crowds cottoned on to the call, which entered the Australian idiom and was reportedly used as a battle cry by infantrymen in North Africa during World War II.

From jingle to hit single

In 1978, the Mojo Singers' song C'mon Aussie C'mon was so successful at promoting Channel Nine's cricket coverage that it became a number one hit in Australia.

Channel Seven wanted something similar for its VFL broadcasts and an advertising company contacted singer-songwriter, Brady.

Brady had recently watched a video of Kid Stakes, a theatre performance which was a prequel to the 1955 Ray Lawler play Summer of the Seventeenth Doll, in which the expression "up there Cazaly" was used on several occasions.

"Talking to them, the line 'up there Cazaly' suddenly came to me during the meeting," Brady told 3MP disc jockey Keith McGowan in 1979.

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Brady teamed up with his friend and music arranger Peter Sullivan to compose the jingle about footy being preferable to any other form of entertainment on the weekend.

"Peter added the great key change in it. I wrote it," Brady said.

McGowan placed the 1 minute and 15 second jingle on high rotation and convinced Brady to turn it into a full-length song, which ran 2:40. Brady and Sullivan called themselves The Two-Man Band.

"It went to number one and what did I do? I put my hand up [and said], 'Ooh it was me, it was me!'"

Brady was holidaying in England when he learned Up There Cazaly had soared above Racey's Some Girls on the Australian chart.

"Ron Tudor, who was the head of Fable Records, rang me from Buckingham Palace where he was being presented with an MBE," Brady said.

"And he said, 'Hey fat boy,' — he used to call me fat boy and I wasn't fat in those days, he got in early — he said, 'We've got a number one record!'

"I had no idea, I knew we'd released it, but there you go. Isn't that amazing?"

Brady triumphantly performed the song at that year's VFL grand final but battled technical issues.

The song lost its number one position to My Sharona but Brady had the knack of writing footy anthems, with One Day in September proving the Two-Man Band weren't a one-hit wonder.

Brady also helped write Greg Champion's 1994 popular song That's the thing about football.

Is Mike Brady passionate about Australian Football?

Born to Irish parents, Brady moved from England to Melbourne in 1959 and experienced stardom at an early age when his band MPD Ltd had a 1965 Australian hit single with Little Boy Sad.

"When you're that young, I was 16 at the time, you think you're going to be a future prime minister, but when the work dries up you usually end up at the car wash. I spent a lot of time at the car wash on and off," Brady said.

With his catalogue of footy songs, most assume Brady loves the sport, but he says there's more to it.

"I became a fan of the game," he said.

"I wasn't a huge fan of the game when I wrote it (Up There Cazaly) but I've always been an observant person because I couldn't read or write very well at all when I left school so I remembered things," he said.

"I was fascinated by the way it dominated the suburbs in Melbourne, Adelaide and Perth. It was such a big thing.

"I'd been to the football once and spent all the time watching the crowd and I still do.

"It's really a great spectacle for me and that's where Up There Cazaly came from. It came from observing the spectacle."

When it was released, the anthem sold 50,000 copies in less than three weeks. However, its popularity each September doesn't make it a huge money-spinner.

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"I think I got a million streams in one year," he said. "It was about $38 worth of royalties and about 46 pages of accounting."

Apart from its rousing chorus, Brady said the song remained popular more than four decades after its release because it appealed to everyone.

"It's not all about blokes, this song," Brady said.

"It's not a blokey song, which is why women like it. It doesn't mention big men flying or the boys or a [specific] team, so I was ahead of my time. It was a woke song."

A Collingwood supporter, Brady jokes that he'll be due for long service leave if he performs his trademark hit at a couple more AFL grand finals.

Only a brave person would bet against there being a stirring rendition of Up There Cazaly when the code's biggest day makes its likely return to the MCG next year.

But that first grand final performance back in 1979 was the one where an English immigrant realised the crowd was on his side.

"People were yelling out, 'Good on ya, Mike.'"