The Brisbane Lions won their way through to their fourth-straight Grand Final in one of the most incredible AFL games ever played that will be talked about long after the final whistle of the season.
Here are three things we learned from the game:
Was this one of the greatest games of all?
There's been more than 17,000 games of VFL and AFL football played since 1897. But there can't have been more than a handful, if that, better than Brisbane's dramatic nine-point win over Hawthorn in Saturday's preliminary final.
In 44 years of covering the game professionally, I can only think of one game which I'd definitively consider greater as a spectacle, and that was also a preliminary final decided in dramatic circumstances, when in 1994 Gary Ablett's goalsquare mark right on the final siren put Geelong in a grand final at North Melbourne's expense.
And while the decision of umpire Hayden Meyer to penalise Hawthorn's Jarman Impey for holding the ball will be the moment which is talked about for longer than the standard, it doesn't deserve to be, for this was a game for the ages.
From a first quarter which yielded five goals to either side, and six in the first 13 minutes, to Hawthorn's freakishly accurate half-time score of 11.1, to some of the most incredible goals kicked in years, Brisbane's power-packed seven-goal third term, and an incredible late comeback from the Hawks, who trailed by 28 points with just on 10 minutes of the last term played, it was hard to keep up with the highlights.
You like fast, flowing and high-scoring footy, this was your baby. It was the first final since the classic 1989 grand final between Hawthorn and Geelong in which both teams scored more than 120 points. And the highest aggregate score in a preliminary final since the 1948 game between Melbourne and Collingwood.
There were heroes left, right and centre. Hawthorn goalsneak Nick Watson with six freakish goals was incredible, veteran forward Jack Gunston not far behind with five, Mitch Lewis with four and one of the marks of the year to put Hawthorn in front for the final time, Kai Lohmann kicking five goals after being statless 16 minutes into the second quarter, and Hugh McCluggage's ice-cool finishing to boot two of the Lions' last three goals, including the matchwinner with just 30-odd seconds left on the clock.
And of course, controversy and drama to spare, the former beginning at the very first bounce of the game when Lachie Neale was poleaxed by Jai Newcombe, and the drama held until the siren rang as Lohmann put the icing on Brisbane's cake.
Recency bias can tend to over-inflate the deeds of contemporary sportspeople and of the games they play. But this one will be hard to top when those "greatest game" lists get another runaround.
Brisbane's stars bob up just when needed
This observer has said for at least three years Brisbane's best is clearly the best in the competition. And what separates the Lions from the rest? Surely, one clear factor is the number of its players who can explode into life after having done very little.
And they won't get many more valuable examples than Kai Lohmann's five-goal stunner, coming after he literally hadn't had a possession 16 minutes into the second quarter.
The smart forward's renaissance began with a free kick 26 minutes into that term from which he goalled to reduce Hawthorn's handy lead to only 15 points. But it was the third quarter in which he really turned on the jets.
The blond-locked goalkicker marked on the point post then successfully snapped a second to give Brisbane the lead for the first time since early in the game. Seven minutes later, he nailed Jarman Impey in a tackle and converted the spoils. And just three minutes after that, he booted his fourth.
The fifth, of course, was the coup de gras, Brisbane players whooping it up even before Lohmann took the kick as the clock ticked down to zero, the Lions marking in space from Will Ashcroft's final clearance of the game.
It literally was a case of from zero to hero, and with so many others capable of turning a dirty into something spectacular, Fremantle is going to have its hands full dealing with danger signs next Saturday.
Would Merrett have made the difference for Hawthorn?
The "what ifs" will haunt Hawthorn for months after coming so close to a crack at a premiership, but perhaps the biggest might still be one which happened last October.
We're talking, of course, about the unsuccessful attempt to lure then-Essendon captain Zach Merrett into the brown-and-gold. The Hawks offered the Bombers picks 10, 22, a future first-round selection and fringe player Henry Hustwaite for the prolific possession winner, but the Bombers, determined not to lose their only player even remotely near the best 50 in the AFL, said "no dice".
Could the Hawks have stumped up something better and landed the biggest fish of the trade period? Perhaps. Would he have given the Hawks another 10 points in their biggest game of the 2026 season. Hard to think anything other than almost certainly.
Hawthorn broke even with Brisbane for clearances (though not out of the centre, despite the last-term heroics of Josh Ward in that department) and only narrowly lost the contested ball count, but the ability of Will Ashcroft, Hugh McCluggage, Lachie Neale and Josh Dunkley in particular to keep winning the ball at stoppages, plus the assisting roles of the likes of Zac Bailey and Cam Rayner, proved numbers and quality too plentiful for the Hawks.
Merrett looks certain to finally end up a Hawk this trade period, 12 months on, but a lot of things have got to go right for a team to earn a shot at a flag, and having finished so frustratingly close to another shot at the crown, you can't blame Hawthorn's powerbrokers should they spend at least the next few weeks wondering if, but for a sweeter trade offering, the club's 13 flags might be 14 next Saturday.
