Greg Baum is chief sports columnist and associate editor with The Age
The Bulldog grand final balm will be at work on Friday night when key people from the three different - and not always amicable - administrations since the club was declared clinically dead in 1989 gather at the home of president Peter Gordon to rejoice together.
At Spotless Stadium on Saturday night, the Bulldogs might have set a record for non-grand final tears.
The Bulldogs beat the house. They beat the odds. They beat the system. They beat the Giants, these Davids. And they're in the grand final for the first time in 55 years.
All good things must come to an end. Sometime during the third quarter of this semi-final, the last straw alighted on Hawthorn's back, so broad for so long, and broke it.
For two months, North Melbourne were clinging on. For two more hours at the Adelaide Oval, they clung some more. But like a man with his fingernails dug into the ledge of a cliff, they had to let go eventually.
It's September. It's finals. It's that archetypal new season, on elevated terms, before heaving crowds. It's Hawthorn time. It's Geelong time. It's time for Geelong-Hawthorn. If ever there were two teams to awaken one another to their vocations, it is these two.
Sam Gibson has played 107 games in a row since his debut, and says the secret was in the first handful.
When Nick Xenophon and Andrew Wilkie announced their mission to loosen the nexus between gambling and sport in Australia on Thursday, it was not hard to imagine that in the offices of some corporate bookies, the first thing they did was to frame a market on the likelihood of the politicians' success, complete with cash-back options and bonus bets.
Either Roger Federer is the Hawthorn of tennis, or the Hawks are the Federer of the AFL. As in a quinella, either way round wins.
Everyone loves a winner. But what we love even more is a loser, if it is the right loser. There can have been few more ideal losers than England when they crashed against lowly Iceland in the European soccer championships this week. We really, really loved that.
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