The Port Adelaide forward is known for his toughness on the football field.

Right now, at his wedding to long-time love Brya at Glamp Nusa resort in Bali, he is trying to keep himself together.

So far, so good.

Suddenly, Powell-Pepper sees his two daughters.

They are wearing white dresses with their hair in pigtails in their role as flower girls.

It all becomes too much for him.

“I knew I was a pretty emotional guy – I obviously cried when I had the little ones,” Powell-Pepper tells The Advertiser.

“Leading up to it I wasn’t sure if I was going to cry.

“As us groomsmen were starting to walk down to line up, I was holding it in then.

“As the music started and I saw Frankie and Billie walking around the corner, I started bawling my eyes out.”

Billie, 16 months, comes down the aisle with Powell-Pepper’s 13-year-old brother-in-law, Jack, who is also in tears.

In the bridal party are Power teammates Travis Boak and Jeremy Finlayson, as well as ex-Port player turned Docker Quinton Narkle.

Coach Ken Hinkley, retired club great Robbie Gray and Zak Butters, the reception MC, are in the crowd.

Powell-Pepper, who is wearing a bone-coloured linen suit, vest and bow tie, is able to compose himself momentarily in the searing heat.

That is until he hears the music for James Morrison’s “I Won’t Let You Go”.

“We’d been making a wedding playlist for the whole year and there was one song that we loved that I was like ‘this would be nice if it’s our wedding song’,” he says.

“But Brya told me she’d already made her mind up about a song (to walk down the aisle).

Powell-Pepper felt like he was dreaming as he and Brya locked eyes while she walked to him.

“It didn’t feel real at all,” he says.

“When she came and we held hands, I looked so much more relaxed.

“Before that, my head looked like it was going to pop.”

The wedding was an emotional celebration for the couple – and a shining light after a difficult football season.

Powell-Pepper played just three games because of suspension and injury.

First came a four-game ban for a high bump on Crows defender Mark Keane in a pre-season match.

Then a ruptured anterior cruciate ligament ended his campaign in April.

“I jumped up, landed and initially thought someone had slipped and crushed my leg,” he says.

“It was like the worst pain ever.

“When I looked at the footage it was just me landing like that by myself.

“I got to the sidelines and I felt fine.

“But then I took off a little bit and was like ‘that doesn’t feel good’.

“As soon as I got into the doctors’ rooms, they did one little pull and they all just looked at each other and said ‘it’s not good, Pep’.

“At scans the next day, normally they send them off so the doctor can tell you, but the guy at the scans shook his head straight away.”

Telling Frankie, 3, why he was not playing was the toughest part of Powell-Pepper’s time on the sidelines.

“She calls everything Port ‘top top’ because you know how we say it in the song (‘We’ll never stop, stop, stop ‘til we’re top, top, top’),” he says.

“So she’d be saying ‘why aren’t you playing for top top?’

“And I’d say ‘Dad’s got a sore knee’.

“She’d want to come to training and watch me.

“She’d say ‘Dad, I want to go to top top’.

“And I’d say ‘Daddy’s not training right now, he’s in the gym getting stronger’.”

Frankie also played a crucial role getting him out of his post-surgery hole.

“As soon as I came home from the hospital, she jumped on my knee and I was like ‘ahhhh’, but then I was like ‘I’m all right now, I’m home’,” he recalls.

“After the second week, I was pretty much up and walking, and once I was doing that, I had a clear plan of what was ahead.

“I had things to put my mind onto and it kept me distracted from feeling sorry for myself.”

One of those was adjusting to his new role as a member of the Power’s leadership group without being able to lead by example on the field or at training.

Powell-Pepper was elevated into the contingent after a career-best 2023 season in which he played all 25 games and finished sixth in the club champion award.

“I had to find other ways to lead like being more vocal and bringing the energy,” he says.

“If the boys see me up and about, energetic and wanting to be there, especially with what I’m going through, that will rub off on them.

“You obviously want to feel sorry for yourself but it’s a family here, a team sport.

“We put all this hard work in at the start of the year for the main goal at the end of the year.

“Just because I got injured, we’re not going to stop pushing for that (premiership) and that’s the way I thought about it.

“The boys were obviously going well throughout the year so I was pumped for them.”

Watching the team from the sidelines put things into perspective.

Powell-Pepper realised he had taken being injury-free for granted.

Typically, he had not thought too much about the small details like warming up for training.

But now?

“When I watch the boys I’m like ‘f***, I just want to be out there’, even a little thing like that, jogging around the square.”

During games, he rode the highs and lows, similar to how he would wear his heart on his sleeve on the field.

Full of passion at Adelaide Oval, Powell-Pepper would become reserved by the time he drove home with his family.

“After every game … Brya would always say to me ‘are you OK?’ Because that’s when she’d know I’d get a bit down,” he says.

“I’d be driving and really quiet.

“I did find myself zoning out.

“A lot of times throughout the year I was fired up and would think ‘I just want to go out there and play for Kenny, and play with the boys’.

“The girls would make me laugh or do something silly, so you realise you’ve got a lot of stuff to be grateful and happy for.”

Brya, Frankie and Billie have been there every step of the way in Powell-Pepper’s recovery.

In July, when he ran for the first time since the injury, they were by his side.

He jogged onto Alberton Oval’s rehabilitation pitch holding Frankie’s hand while she wore a number two guernsey with “Daddy” on the back.

Then she cheered him on, sitting on the turf alongside her mum and sister.

“It was pretty special,” he says.

“The kids probably won’t remember it but I’ll remember it for the rest of my life.

“It’d be twice as hard if you didn’t have that close support.”

The family’s emotional rollercoaster reached another turn in September.

After the Power’s three-point knockout semi-final win at home over Hawthorn, there was a role reversal on the trip home.

“That was the first game where afterwards I was buzzing in the car, saying ‘let’s go’,” he says.

“And Brya and the family were down.

“I said ‘this is normally how I feel’ because normally they’re pretty buzzy after games.

“They felt bad for me.”

Three months after the Power’s season ends with a preliminary final loss away to Sydney, Powell-Pepper is sitting in Port’s media room, pointing to the long scar on his right knee.

“It’s good to have a reminder,” he says.

The scar sits between several pieces of artwork on his leg.

Above the mark on his knee is a large tattoo of a snake wrapped around a bear.

On the proud Whadjuk-Ballardong Noongar man’s ankle is the Aboriginal flag.

There is also a separate love heart.

The words ‘Walk’ and ‘Tall’ are inked on the same spot at the bottom of each leg.

“Just be proud of who you are,” he explains.

Pride is a major motivation behind Powell-Pepper’s comeback.

He cannot wait for his girls to see him playing again.

Billie screams with excitement every time there is footy on the TV, even if it is not a Power match.

Fresh off another milestone on Wednesday – kicking for the first time since the injury – Powell-Pepper hopes to be reintegrated into full training next month and return against Collingwood at the MCG in round 1.

“I can just imagine Billie when the games come around and she actually knows what’s going on and is watching me,” he says.

“Both my girls will go insane.

“They normally walk down as I’m warming up and I’ll give them a little kiss.”

Before and after games is his favourite part of footy, not the matches themselves.

“Cruising in with the girls, playing music, laughing then kissing them goodbye, doing my thing playing, then running to them afterwards,” he says while gesturing with outstretched arms.

“It’s the best feeling ever.”

Powell-Pepper takes confidence from Gray returning from an ACL and starring that “you can come back and still have a really good career”.

“Ever since I did it, I’ve been telling everyone ‘I’ll be back round 1 – watch out 2025 is my year’,” he says.

Powell-Pepper still has rehabilitation goals to meet, but he is allowing himself to envisage running out onto the MCG or Adelaide Oval.

Whenever and wherever his first match is next season, his girls will be in the stands, which will mean everything to the doting dad and husband.

“I don’t reckon I’ll cry when I come back,” he says.

“I reckon I’ll be in the mode, ready to play.

“But that’s what I said about the wedding – I didn’t think I was going to cry then I bawled my eyes out.”