HE is to play his 400th AFL game on Saturday night, 157 of which were with Port Adelaide, along with another 26 matches in Port Adelaide colours in the SANFL. This is not to be forgotten.

He has four AFL premierships, the first with Port Adelaide - as he always proudly remembers and eagerly reminds all.

He is among the greatest "exports" from Port Adelaide to continue his rise to the highest and grandest pedestals in Australian football - along with Craig Bradley (Carlton), Nathan Buckley (Collingwood) and Tom Quinn (Geelong).

And while at Hawthorn, he has never dismissed or ignored his Port Adelaide roots. He has spoken with full appreciation of how his path to regal status in Australian football began at Alberton, following the steps of his older brother Peter. Those celebratory moments after grand finals at the MCG always show him raising four fingers to splendidly acknowledge each flag, even the breakthrough AFL premiership with Port Adelaide in 2004.

So how appropriate - and fortunate amid all the confusion and perplexing ways of the game during a worldwide pandemic - that Shaun Burgoyne joins an exclusive club of five (the VFL-AFL's 400 Club) in a match against Port Adelaide on Saturday night.

Quinn, Bradley and Buckley left Alberton as premiership heroes before there was an AFL logo on the most senior Port Adelaide jumper.

Burgoyne played his last game for the Port Adelaide Football Club - against North Melbourne at Football Park on August 29, 2009 - as an AFL player while the destructive shadows that became Port Adelaide's darkest chapter in the national league continued to grow.

Bradley and Buckley left Alberton in the 1980s and early 1990s respectively to achieve their greatness in the grandest Australian football competition (while South Australian football was trapped in political games on each side of the SA-Victoria border - a theme that ended with Port Adelaide's bold ambitions in 1990).

Quinn departed from his family's well-established roots at Port Adelaide for work at the Ford car manufacturing plant in Geelong, a grand blessing for the Geelong Football Club, during the economically depressed days of the 1930s.

Why Burgoyne left Port Adelaide at the end of the 2009 AFL season is never so easily explained - and remains unspoken by a diplomatic Burgoyne.

Perhaps it was the fall-out of the Port Adelaide board not accepting coach Mark Williams' recommendation that Burgoyne succeed Warren Tredrea as captain during the 2009 pre-season. Or the fractures created inside the team during a game at Subiaco Oval in Perth over the "midfield licences" that had to be earned during the pre-season to play in the Port Adelaide engine room (a pre-season in which Burgoyne was limited by his persistent and career-threatening knee injury).

Or perhaps Burgoyne just needed a change of environments, both on and off the field.

The fact Burgoyne has never made much of the lingering mystery says so much of his decency - in an era of clickbait storytelling - and of his much-admired character. He has thrived and earned every tribute amid the greatest challenges, to himself, his teams and his clubs.

Take note, Burgoyne has never drawn the ire or the jeers of Port Adelaide fans when he has appeared as a rival in 16 matches rather than a helping hand in 183.

Port Adelaide's willingness to entertain the trade - to a rival with the sweetest view from the AFL premiership window - is a tribute to fitness coach Andrew Russell, another export from Alberton. He did find the way to revive two Port Adelaide premiership heroes - Burgoyne and Stuart Dew - challenged by dodgy knees when they arrived at Hawthorn. There is no changing the past.

The present allows Port Adelaide fans - even while seeing Hawthorn as the match-day enemy and Burgoyne as one of Alastair Clarkson's so-called soldiers in this battle for four vital premiership points - to celebrate a marvellous career that began at Alberton.

There is no shortage of moments to recall - the silky runs in the centre corridor of the MCG during the 2004 AFL grand final, the immaculate tandem with ruckman Brendon Lade at stoppages or the defiance to all limiting tactics while he shared the Showdown Medal with Simon Goodwin in the second derby of 2005.

The extraordinary versatility in a player who has changed games as a defender, midfielder and forward. His uncanny ability to read the play - and then put it to his terms, in a way that makes even the staunchest rival on and off the field want to applaud - as Alex Jesaulenko did of Barrie Robran at Adelaide Oval in the Carlton-North Adelaide finale for the Championship of Australia in 1972.

Game 400 is to be played indoors in a stadium named after an entertainment studio that creates mythical superheroes.

For two decades, Port Adelaide, Hawthorn and all football fans have marvelled at a genuine superhero who upholds the true meaning of champion, elite and superstar. He has made the game better for his presence.

Shaun Burgoyne is a rare note in Port Adelaide's 25-season chapter in a 151-year tome. Until the mid-1990s, there was an understanding - even if Bob McLean had left a legacy of playing hardball in any clearance from Alberton - of accepting ambitious Port Adelaide players would want to prove themselves in the VFL. But they also would eagerly return to a welcoming Alberton to enhance and further serve the Port Adelaide Football Club, just as Greg Phillips, Mark Williams, Bruce Abernethy did in through the 1980s and 1990s.

The AFL era has different pressures and conditions in the framework of a national competition (but many still return to Port Adelaide after sampling football elsewhere). Maybe Burgoyne should never have left Alberton. But there is no question he has maintained the admiration of Port Adelaide fans, just as Quinn, Bradley and Buckley did while they achieved their greatness at Geelong, Carlton and Collingwood.

Burgoyne has earned he standing ovation he will command before and after his 400th AFL game on Saturday night. In between first and final siren, the admiration should continue.