Some heroes remain gallant even after the heroics seem done. And so it was that the Western Bulldogs' enigmatic saviour Luke Beveridge completed one of the greatest afternoons in the history of Australian rules football with one last act of chivalry.
Having written the fairytale, delivered an epic contest and a happy ending of brave and joyous proportions, Beveridge stood upon the dais in the middle of the MCG and removed his premiership Jock McHale Medal from around his neck.
"Before I go," said the coach, "I'd like to get Bob Murphy on the stand." Placing the medal around Murphy's neck Beveridge added: "This is yours, mate. You deserve it more than anyone."
The sporting record books will record the Western Bulldogs' 2016 premiership – their first in 62 years and only their second ever – as 22-point victory against the more highly- favoured Sydney Swans.
Surely if a picture could record that victory it would be the long, tight embrace between coach and wounded captain.
It will not go without saying 99,981 watched the perennial battlers win from seventh position, a feat never before achieved and completing a full stop to a campaign which began in Perth four finals ago, continued with a victory over Hawthorn and then another in a down-to-the-wire preliminary final in western Sydney. So much about this premiership has defied tradition and so it was that almost every supporter remained in the stadium to watch victory celebrations. It would be simplistic to state that the crowd played a part in this victory but that conclusion seemed inescapable with every one of the Bulldogs' 13 goals.
Beveridge said the Bulldogs fans had made his team feel like the Beatles and so it was that this game — a brave, frenetic contest in which the lead constantly changed and players of both colours continued to outdo each other in acts of valour — boasted all the deafening pandemonium of a rock concert.
If the Beveridge-Murphy gesture provided the tearful off-field ceremony the moment which stood tall amid the on-field theatrics took place 21 minutes into the final quarter when 33-year-old Dale Morris, a veteran of vanquished preliminaries past, threw his body around the athletic bulk of Lance Franklin.
That moment saw the ball move to the Tom Boyd, the most scrutinised young forward in the game whose subsequent goal, his third, sealed the game and the premiership. If Boyd came of age stepping into the ruck last week against the Giants, he saved his greatest game to date for the grand final.
Moments earlier Jason Johannisen had seemed to have done the same, but in a stanza of high drama that goal was disallowed, deemed touched by Jeremy Laidler and the ball, having been returned to the centre, moved back to the Bulldogs goal.
The drama of the final term had seen Sydney's star midfielder Dan Hannebery carried from the ground with a devastating knee injury, then Franklin put the Swans within a point thumping a 50-metre goal from an impossible angle as Hannebery implored doctors and trainers to roll the dice as he ran up and down the boundary. And minutes later the resurrected star Liam Picken take a last-ditch contender for mark of the year over Laidler.
Johannisen, the South African-born 23-year-old won the Norm Smith Medal in a close contest from the tireless brilliance of Sydney's Josh Kennedy. Johannisen had ripped his hamstring so badly in April his season looked finished but was rushed back into the team in July in one of the many superhuman feats achieved by these Bulldogs.
"To all our supporters," said Johannisen in a master of understatement, "it's been a long time coming."
Beveridge, who only six years ago was completing his famous hat-trick of premierships at St Bede's in the amateurs, is in his second year at the club. He said he felt at half-time it would take a superhuman effort to achieve victory. He could not, he said, ask of his players any more.
Paying tribute to the shattered Swans, thrashed two years ago by Hawthorn and who finished 2016 as the minor premier, Beveridge said: "It took our very best. You're an unbelievable side. This unbelievable group of players ... their hearts are so big and they've waited so long."
Beveridge has been the Bulldogs' saviour and all season, since the injury that shattered the AFL community and supporters across the competition, Murphy has been the club's talisman. In fact, he has been since that dark summer of discontent less than two years ago when one captain walked away and Murphy became captain.
His journey to this premiership as an onlooker has been accompanied by tears of both varieties but once he had embraced all his teammates there was only the widest of grins, having previously likened his emotions at one point of this spring campaign as a those of a "human pretzel".
While his acting captain, Easton Wood, lay prone on the MCG's 50-metre line, stunned with joy amid the red, white and blue confetti Murphy stood 20 metres away and revealed his Bulldogs guernsey underneath the regulation club tracksuit as his adoring supporters applauded.
Mingling among the victory lappers were past Bulldogs greats Chris Grant, Daniel Giansiracusa, Rohan Smith and Luke Darcy — all of whom have played key roles in achieving this unpredicted flag.
As the Bulldogs' inner sanctum appeared to expand as it came together at the final siren embracing, the Swans players lay apart, a separate sea of shattered red and white bodies. Kieren Jack told his supporters from the dais: "We couldn't get the job done but we're coming back, we're going nowhere."
In a game of constantly changing leads so deafening was the noise from the packed arena that in the second quarter Swan Gary Rohan stood immobile for close to 10 seconds, believing he had marked unable to hear instructions to play on.
Teammates screamed at Rohan who snapped and goaled, the second of a four-goal Sydney streak which saw the Swans extend the lead to eight points.
Co-captain Jack provided the moment of an otherwise dour but desperate opening quarter moving back with the flight of the ball eight minutes into the game and marking while the Bulldogs' leader Wood delivered the first bone-crunching bump of the play-off.
In the opening minutes of the game Franklin marked strongly but unselfishly passed to Tippett and an opportunity to stamp his authority was lost. Buddy drama continued to punctuate the opening term after the game's biggest name limped from the ground five minutes later and was led straight to the rooms where medicos dealt with a problematic right ankle.
Franklin was back five minutes later, missed another shot at goal and by half-time had prowled, threatened, spoilt both teammates and foes but had failed to overpower his brave Bulldogs opponent Joel Hamling, who had spent much of 2016 in the VFL. Hamling faced one of football's toughest assignments and passed with flying colours.
It was one of many battles that on paper belonged to the Swans. And in the week the Bulldogs celebrated the occasion of their first grand final in 55 years the very fact of making it seemed an achievement in itself. If football's heart wanted Footscray then its wiser head declared Sydney. History will also record than on this momentous afternoon in Melbourne, the heart emerged victorious.