Beyond the viral social media campaign, past the flood of valedictory books and away from the David Parkin documentary about "graduates" of Alastair Clarkson's coaching box, Hawthorn remains a football club vying for an AFL flag this September like all the rest.
Three consecutive premierships carry with them a certain level of baggage. There's the talk of making further history by winning a fourth, and there is also the lionisation of the club for what it has already done. These days the bookstores sport as many tomes about Hawthorn premierships as they once did about football itself. Booming membership has helped spawn a Hawks industry selling, to crib from Cut Copy, a kind of strange nostalgia for the future.
At the same time Clarkson's record of achievement means he is being hailed and almost fetishised in a manner seldom seen; certainly not since the cult of Kevin Sheedy reached its peak either side of the 2000 season. To watch Parkin interviewing Brendon Bolton, Damien Hardwick, Leon Cameron and Luke Beveridge about Clarkson was to get some insight about the environment he fostered, but it was also to stop and think: hang on, isn't this stuff usually saved for coaches and players in the retired column? With a contract recently extended until 2019, his finish line is some ways off.
Certainly Clarkson expressed an air of detachment from the way he and his club have been turned into a museum piece, even as they continue to contend. The great Hawthorn side of the 2010s is not ready to be the subject of historical discussion, even though the conversation has already been going on for quite some time.
"No. 1, I haven't seen it," Clarkson said of Parkin's documentary, "No. 2, I've got no control over it and No. 3, they're all at their different clubs doing what they're trying to do to help their clubs and we're doing what we're trying to do in this moment right now and that's win a game of footy. It becomes pretty inconsequential really."
It's not hard to imagine him speaking similarly about the video dreamed up by the club's marketing wing to generate talk about the finals. Staged and CGI-enhanced footage of a Hawk grabbing a snake then dropping it onto a barbecue group of rival supporters - Geelong, natch - went around the world. But it could only have been the product of a club with A) plenty of money to throw around and B) concerns somewhere within the building that these finals campaigns are becoming a bit of old hat.
That sort of thinking is anathema to Clarkson, who smiled when noting the bigger than usual turnout of fans and media to the club's final training session of the week at Waverley. While some of his players have followed the "embrace the hunt" slogan being used by the aforementioned marketing department and bestowed favouritism on other clubs, Clarkson leavened his enthusiasm for finals with sound logic: Hawthorn are here again, Hawthorn know how to get it done in September, Hawthorn have the experience required to face any finals obstacle.
"I'm not really too concerned by form lines and that sort of stuff," he said. "You've got to win games of footy in September, not August. Our form in September's been pretty strong and if we can reproduce that type of form we're going to be hard to beat.
"You just cope with whatever's put in front of you, you address it. The benefit for this group is, it's a really experienced group, they've had a lot of hurdles over the journey and whatever's put in front of them they usually find a way to get around."
Nothing has summed that up more effectively than Hawthorn's record in tight games this year. Six of their wins have come in matches decided by fewer than 10 points. While the rapier-like foot skills and ball movement of previous years has been less prevalent, game awareness, composure and sheer bloodyminded determination have been evident in abundance. Finals-winning characteristics.
"We don't plan to have close games, no-one really does," Clarkson said. "You focus on playing your best footy and you hope that's going to get you across the line whether it's by a single kick or a couple of kicks in it.
"But when it's presented to us we back our players to be able to cope with what's in front of them and we've been able to do that numerous times over the course of this year and indeed over the last five or six years. We'll see what happens but it's likely to be pretty close tomorrow night, so hopefully we can handle those scenarios pretty well again."
Much of the Hawthorn story has been forged through meetings with Geelong, the club with which it has wrestled for AFL supremacy over much of the past decade. Walking into the MCG on Friday night there will be a sensation of more history about to be made, another chapter for all those books, another moment for the likes of Parkin and others to put into context.
Clarkson and his players will, in time, join in the merry-go-round of history, marketing and discussion. But they want to stave off their own period of reflection by keeping things going this September. A premiership is a premiership, four in a row or not.
"It's been spoken about less than last year to be fair, amongst both our coaches and our players," Clarkson said. "It hasn't been something that's been used one bit at this point. We know we've got a formidable opponent tomorrow night and that sort of stuff is still a fair way down the track for us."