Admittedly forgot about Goodes in that post above (although I'd already put him in, so whatever) but Kelly probably suffers from straddling the period, he played quite a bit of his best footy before '96 as well, while there have been a large number of players better than Dunkley. Guess Plugger went till about '99 or '00 (not including the comeback), and is an OK chance.
In my opinion, Plugger didn't play his best footy for Sydney, more that he was actually out on the ground week in week out, which let him have an effect on Sydney's season. At St. Kilda he'd have an enormous effect on just about every game he played, but he wasn't playing enough, and wasn't settled down enough off the field, for that to effect the season's fortunes.