Melbourne broke its 57-year premiership drought last Saturday night with a second-half hail of goals we're unlikely to see again in many games of any description, let alone a grand final.
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How does a team 19 points in arrears more than 16 minutes into the third quarter end up winning by 74 points, the eighth-biggest margin in grand final history, booting 16 of the last 17 goals of the game? Truly remarkable stuff.
Which would only have fuelled further the discussion that these days seems to occur the instant a new AFL premier is crowned, namely, whether that team can turn one flag triumph into several. Yes, the ubiquitous talk of a dynasty.
Fair enough, too, I guess. Few teams have swept through a final series as convincingly as did the Demons since the current final eight system was installed in 2000; their wins by 33, 83 and 74 points second only to Essendon of that same year and Geelong of 2007, both of whom won their three finals by an aggregate 230 points.
And fair enough on the score of recent history. It's one of the curiosities of the post-2000 era that while the AFL competition only seems to get tighter from top to bottom, more teams have been capable of capitalising on that first premiership to win at least one or two more.
The last hat-trick of flags prior to Brisbane's 2001-03 golden period had come nearly a half-century earlier, delivered by another great Melbourne team, which won three on end from 1955-57, and five out of six from 1955-60.
But since the Lions, we've seen Geelong win three flags in five years, Hawthorn pull off another hat-trick, and Richmond win three times in four years. Superficially at least, Melbourne's chances of doing something similar look pretty good.
Age will certainly be no barrier; the Demons on Saturday with an average age of 24 years and 306 days, just one player older than 30 (Michael Hibberd) and only seven older than 25. That made them the youngest flag-winning 22 since the Western Bulldogs of 2016.
Melbourne's flag line-up had eight players in the 23-man squad (including medical sub James Jordon) 21 or younger.
The Demons earned four Rising Star nominations in 2021 - Jordon, Trent Rivers, Jake Bowey and eventual winner Luke Jackson, and has three more players named in the AFL's best under-22 side (Jackson, Rivers and Kysaiah Pickett).
The alternative argument on the age question, of course, particularly using that Bulldog 2016 line-up as a reference point, is that youth may actually be a disadvantage.
Could too many younger Demons potentially get ahead of themselves, having tasted the ultimate success so relatively early in their careers?
There's enough other examples to support that case, like, for example, Essendon's "Baby Bombers" of 1993, who never even got a grand final again for another seven years.
Collingwood in 2010 had a comparatively young team which couldn't back up its flag, though it did get to a grand final the next year.
And even Hawthorn, prior to its flag hat-trick of 2013-15, found flag success initially hard to replicate.
The 2008 team which was seen to have won "ahead of its time" missed finals the following year and only scraped into the eight in 2010.
That, though, merely preceded a five-year span in which they'd reach a preliminary final and a losing grand final before again reaching the summit three times in succession.
And there's plenty of parallels to suggest that even were the Demons to slip up next year, they're around for the long haul.
Like the Hawks, Melbourne has some special high-end draft picks in Christian Petracca, Clayton Oliver, Christian Salem and Angus Brayshaw who have matured into some of the very best players in the AFL.
Like the Hawks, the Dees have judiciously hand-picked some needs-specific senior talent like Steven May, Jake Lever, even wingman Ed Langdon, to offer age balance.
And similarly, their list has ridden the various peaks and troughs together, finding a synergy which binds them strongly. It's a potent blend.
Perhaps Melbourne's top-four finish in 2018 was its version of Hawthorn in 2008. And, after a couple of subsequent false starts, it's a group now very much hitting its sweet spot.
You need plenty of luck to create a dynasty. Not too many injuries, the twists of fate falling your way, sometimes, as was the case with Richmond two seasons ago, a little adversity to galvanise the troops.
Most of all, you need sufficient hunger. And after nearly 60 years in the wilderness as a club, and the obvious awareness of the current Demon playing group about all those who came before them, it seems like Melbourne has plenty of that.
That was evident enough in coach Simon Goodwin's words minutes after the final siren had rung last Saturday night. "It's not the end of anything - this is the start for our footy club," he said.
Ominous words for the rest of the AFL competition.
And judging by the breathtaking fashion in which Melbourne swept away nearly six decades of heartache against the Bulldogs, who'd dare doubt that Goodwin was on the money.