“It’s not the critic who counts, not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood . . . who, at the best, knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly . . .”

The words of Theodore Roosevelt, the 26th president of the United States, are tattooed on the back of Jamie Peacock, the Leeds Rhinos prop and England captain, for whom they could almost have been written.

Deeds, daring and devotion; blood, sweat and no few tears have characterised Peacock’s career, which suffered its stumbles before a glorious decade, with Bradford Bulls and now Leeds.

Rather than the prawn sandwich brigade, the red meat legion will descend on Old Trafford for this evening’s engage Super League showdown between Leeds and St Helens, incredibly Peacock’s eighth Grand Final in nine years. He already has a fistful of gold winner’s rings and wants to start filling up his other hand. To quote again from Roosevelt’s 1910 speech in Paris: “His place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat.”

Waiting to emerge from the tunnel is Peacock’s defining moment. “Standing there, the wall of noise ahead of you,” he said. “It’s just the excitement that gets me, that I’m about to do the job I love doing. There’s romance about the Challenge Cup, not with the Grand Final. You can knock together four performances and turn up and win at Wembley. That’s not what Old Trafford’s about.

“You’ve gone through 27 rounds and the business part of the play-offs, so it’s completely different. I prefer it, because it’s utterly uncompromising. Get back into that dressing room with the lads and that trophy, there’s no better feeling. But as great a place as it is to win, it’s an appalling place to lose.”

Peacock lost two Grand Finals but won three more with Bradford, the first in 2001. The Bulls were beaten by Sean Long’s last-gasp dropped goal for St Helens in the most controversial of finals the year after — “if I could have scripted it, we’d have won it that way, but Longy came up with the big play” — before Bradford completed their treble-winning season in 2003. Leeds beat them in 2004, but the result was reversed a year later in Peacock’s most satisfying final triumph in his farewell appearance for the Bulls.

“I was captain in 2005 and we won it from third with a bunch of players who just had a fantastic team spirit,” he said. “We fought week after week from a seemingly impossible situation in achieving something that had never been done before and will be difficult to do again.”

Leeds have beaten St Helens in the past two finals, with Peacock doing the modern-day prop’s equivalent of back-to-back marathons by playing all 80 minutes each time. “You don’t get many great performances in finals, but 2007 was one,” he said. “We were massive underdogs, but we knew we’d win and we were ruthlessly clinical. Last year, we did it tough in grinding Saints down in the wet. I’m not that surprised we’re both here again.”

After a combustible encounter five weeks ago that deepened the rift between the two leading clubs, Peacock has emerged as a peacemaker along with James Graham, the St Helens prop, who echoed his sentiments for a firm but fair contest. “I don’t particularly like the spiteful side of rugby league,” Peacock said. “For me as England captain, it’s time to rise above that. I feel we can have a good rivalry, but not a spiteful one. Me and Jamma [Graham] have spoken about that, because it’s detrimental to the England team.”

Not that a sixth Grand Final victory for Peacock and third in a row with Leeds can be earned anything other than the hard way.

How they line up
Leeds Rhinos: B Webb; S Donald, L Smith, K Senior, R Hall; D McGuire, R Burrow; K Leuluai, M Diskin, J Peacock, J Jones-Buchanan, C Ablett, K Sinfield (captain). Interchange: A Lauitiiti, L Burgess, R Bailey, I Kirke.
St Helens: P Wellens; A Gardner, M Gidley, K Eastmond, F Meli; L Pryce, S Long; J Graham, K Cunningham (captain), T Puletua, C Flannery, J Wilkin, L Gilmour. Interchange: J Roby, B Hargreaves, P Clough, M Fa’asavalu.
Referee: S Ganson.
Television: Live on Sky Sports 1 from 5.30pm (kick-off 6pm).