Premierships are built on tactics, skill, hard work and endeavour, but the Western Bulldogs had extra help on Saturday as they won just the second grand final in their history.
Coach Luke Beveridge has revealed that a 1954 halfpenny was handed to him by a club trainer before the big game against Sydney on Saturday.
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Wood makes his opposite number earn it, Picken gets the Doggies out to a handy lead, Swan Kennedy drags his side back into the contest, Morris tackles before Boyd finishes as a 62-year premiership drought ends.
Of course the last, and only, time the Doggies won a premiership before this weekend was back in 1954 and Beveridge is now calling for that "bloody lucky" halfpenny to have its own rightful place in the club's museum.
"Kevin O'Neil, one of our trainers, has a massive heart, you can see in his eyes he has dedicated himself to our football club over a long period of time. He shook my hand and slipped something in my hand and I grabbed it and I didn't look at it, I put it in my pocket, and I walked into the meeting room where I talked to the players and I pulled it out and it was a 1954 halfpenny," Beveridge told 1000 guests at the club's premiership function on Saturday night.
"Kevin told me that a gentleman gave it to him at the grand final parade on Friday. Now I'm not sure whether that gets its own standing in our museum but it was a pretty special gesture and I'm not superstitious but it's a bloody lucky halfpenny."
Beveridge was full of praise for his players and admitted that when he arrived at Whitten Oval a few years ago, a place he described as "tough to work at" at the time, he didn't think premiership success would arrive so soon.
"They've got open minds and they've explored a lot of things together," he said of his players.
"When we started a couple years ago, I'm not sure we honestly envisaged it would turn out like this as quickly as it did.
"You need courage to explore it, you need determination and you need big hearts and you need persistence.
"Persistence personified today in the biggest game of our lives and they are the ones that we all rely on. They are the ones that pretty much shape our lives."
The game's newest premiership coach also read an extract from a book about Aussie Rules called Play On, and related it back to what the Bulldogs had just achieved.
"Footy is about these things, it confirms your suspicions that there is something more," he read.
"It alerts you to the existence of the soul. It invites you to be faithful and loyal, and just when you are doubting it, you see a game which makes you realise why you are so enthusiastic about it.
"You see courage, you see commitment, you see personal sacrifice, you see skill and you see beauty and you are uplifted.
"Footy is one of the few places in contemporary life where you experience the transcendent.
"Footy is also about suffering and suffering can be uplifting. Suffering is a natural state, it is honest and how we respond to that suffering is elemental.
"Suffering can bring us together and it is only when we understand the fullness of that togetherness, we understand the fullness of joy.
"So when we watch the premiership flag unfurl, there are tears. In those tears, there is that joy in once suffering."
Beveridge then told the crowd: "There won't be much suffering next year when we unfurl that flag."