On a day when they predicted storm and tempest and maybe a scrambling, scrappy struggle, they got sunshine, football and heroes.
They got drama and miracles, parry and thrust and ebb and flow.
And from both the teams in their turn they got triumph and despair.
Sydney beat Hawthorn by 10 points in the AFL grand final after three times being beaten to the point of submission.
In a scenario made for conspicuous valour and guts, Sydney produced Adam Goodes, Jarrad McVeigh, Lewis Roberts, Ryan O’Keefe, Mike Pyke and a somewhat unlikely Mitch Morton.
Hawthorn had Buddy Franklin strutting and performing occasional miracles and a bloodied captain Luke Hodge who left the ground three times, possibly for transfusions.
The Swans faced destruction first in the opening term when they scored one goal to Hawthorn’s four and went to the break with heads spinning and came out again with them screwed back on.
Josh Kennedy kicked straight in the first minute, Kieren Jack did the same four minutes later and Sam Reid put his side in front for the first time at the 14 minute mark.
Then came Morton, a reject from West Coast and Richmond and almost dumped by Sydney, with two dancing, swerving goals that gave the Swans a 16-point half time lead.
As the crowd of almost 100,000 were putting the question mark on “how did that happen” the Swans had opened the second half with their seventh and eighth unanswered goals and the premiership was theirs.
David Hale got one back for the Hawks after 16 minutes, but it didn’t seem to matter.
Then Buddy kicked one, and then another he shouldn’t have even tried, and it was on again.
Five goals in 10 minutes, the Hawks back in front, Sydney spluttering.
Then it happened again.
Hawthorn kicked the first two goals of the final quarter and stopped.
Daniel Hannebery pinched one back for the Swans, Jack levelled the scores and Goodes dribbled one over the line to reclaim the lead and Daniel Malceski, who had kicked Sydney’s first goal, also kicked their last.
“It sometimes happens that way,” said Swans coach John Longmire.
Maybe, but no-one remembers the last time.
