It is a philosophy Parker has held since he was a junior – and a damn successful one as well. Just as Sydney have named their club champion award after nine-time winner Bob Skilton, Parker's local club, Langwarrin, in Melbourne's south-east could do likewise with their junior trophies.

Pity Parker's teammates at Langwarrin because he won the best fairest every year, from under nines through to under 16s, then won another with his TAC Cup team Dandenong Stingrays.

Come Saturday night, Parker might need to find more room in his already crowded trophy cabinet to add a second premiership medal.

Parker may have flown under the radar of the umpires, who awarded him 12 votes in the Brownlow, but not so his teammates, who nominated him alongside Lance Franklin and Josh Kennedy for the AFL Players' Association's MVP award. The public have also cottoned on to the rising star's prowess. He is vying with Franklin and Kennedy for Norm Smith Medal favouritism.

Parker's build-up to this year's grand final is a lot different to that of two years ago when, as the youngest player in the Swans' premiership team, he was effectively the last man picked, named as the sub.

"It was two days before the game when I found out I was playing," Parker said. "It was a bit nerve-racking that week, I probably didn't soak it up as much as I should have and this year I can really enjoy it. These opportunities don't come around too much."

Parker is only 21 but you get the feeling he will not be the type of player who, a decade from now as a veteran, regrets how he did not appreciate his good fortune.

That should not come as a surprise considering Parker has seemingly been ahead of his time as a footballer. He was 19 when he won a flag with the Swans. As a child, he was bigger than his peers, or a "man child", as Jude Bolton likes to describe him. Every time he was asked to rise a level, he did it seamlessly.

Only the best 15-year-olds at the Stingrays get "two or three games" in the under-18 competition to prepare them for the following year. Parker starred and kept his place for the finals.

"We haven't done that with any of the 15-, 16-year-olds we played," said former Stingrays coach Graeme Yeats, who played 182 games for Melbourne in the 1980s and 90s.

Despite being one the Stingrays' best in the preliminary final, Parker missed out on the grand final to make way for one of the team's leaders.

"It was just automatic an under-16 doesn't play, he just thought I've had this experience that others mightn't have got and he saw it as a real positive," Yeats said.

In Parker's first, and only, senior game for Langwarrin as a 17-year-old, he was best on ground.

"Even good quality kids from TAC Cup, it takes them a few games to get used to it. He slotted straight in, won his own footy, burnt them with his athleticism and kicked goals," his coach that day Gavin Artico said.

North Melbourne coach Brad Scott could have said the same thing last week of Parker, who had 26 possessions, kicked three goals and took one of the marks of the year.

When the whips are cracking on Saturday, Yeats has no doubt Parker will be in among it.

Yeats remembers one game where Parker was knocked out and, moments after coming around, wanted to return to the fray.

"The boys on the bench said he jumped up and said 'I'm coming on, I'm ready to play' a few minutes after he was concussed and taken off the ground," Yeats said.

"He was ready to run through brick walls. We couldn't risk putting him back on but I've got no doubt if he came back on he would have had a crack at the first ball that came his way and wouldn't have taken a backwards step."

Parker has never known another way. "I've just played like that my whole life," he said. "It hasn't changed."