Before it was even released, the league had bought the rights to the song, and ever since, it has been synonymous with the game in this country.

Jimmy Barnes recorded a version of it with Turner in 1992 for that year’s campaign, and in 1993, Turner performed it live at the Sydney Football Stadium as the Brisbane Broncos took on the St George Dragons in the season ender (the second year running the teams had met in the grand final).

Though she entered into the relationship with rugby league as a novice, Turner was quickly impressed by the toughness of the players, who wore none of the padding of their counterparts in American football.

“This is real men out here, with just shoes on their feet, and they could probably do it without the shoes as well,” she said. “I thought, respect.”

For Paul Dainty, the producer of the Australian production of Tina: The Musical, there’s a special symmetry to the invitation to perform at this year’s grand final.

“I toured Tina back in the day, and then fast-forward all these years to producing the show about her life,” he said on Wednesday morning, just hours before he was to be appointed an Officer of the Order of Australia at Government House in Melbourne. “She was great, a lovely, beautiful person.”

Dainty’s involvement with the musical dates back about eight years. “I was having dinner with Neil Diamond and I got a whisper from someone overseas that a colleague was working on an idea to bring the Tina Turner life story to the stage,” he recalls. “And so I got onto that person within an hour or so.”

There’s a further personal connection, too. Brian Walsh, who died suddenly in March this year, was a close friend. He and Dainty worked together over the years and were partners in a company together.