It was Round 11 of 2002, and if Geelong wasn't travelling all that well, the Cats were at least in a better spot than their opposition on a Sunday afternoon in early June at Docklands, then known as Colonial Stadium.
Carlton had been runner-up in 1999, won 13 games in a row in 2000, and made it to a semifinal in 2001 under debutant coach Wayne Brittain, but things were beginning to go decidedly pear-shaped midway through 2002. And as we know now of course, they'd get far, far worse yet.
Come this mid-season match-up, the Blues were a disastrous 1-9 and already two-and-a-half games behind second-last on the ladder. Never having "won" a wooden spoon was a major source of honour for the club, and now even that was looking likely.
Even more so as Mark Thompson's Cats cruised to a six-goals-plus lead it still held almost 10 minutes into the final term after Kent Kingsley's fourth goal, young draftees Cameron Ling, Corey Enright and Joel Corey all impressive.
Suddenly, though, without warning, Carlton stirred. Lance Whitnall, who'd only booted his first goal for the afternoon at the beginning of the final term, now kicked a second, the margin still upwards of five goals.
Only a couple of minutes later, Brendan Fevola booted his third for the game. The gap was still 26 points, however, and far from being spooked, Geelong now did some attacking of its own, Ling and young forward Paul Chapman adding behinds.
Time continued to tick away, and as time-on approached, the Cats still led by 27 points. It meant that when Carlton small man Jim Plunkett booted the Blues' fourth of the final term, the Blues' fans felt little point in getting excited.
But Carlton went forward again, and only just over a minute later, Whitnall kicked his third of the quarter. Geelong's lead had now been reduced to only 15 points and fans and commentators alike were starting to ponder the impossible, the Blues not having won a single game for just on two months.
Big man and former North Melbourne star Corey McKernan, the one ray of light in Carlton's increasingly grim season, now bombed one from outside the 50-metre arc to the goalsquare, where Fevola took a genuine screamer and kicked his fourth. This was now very doable, the margin only 10 points, five minutes left to play.
Both sides continued to go flat chat before more drama, when Geelong's Darren Milburn chasing a ball near the boundary with Carlton's Matthew Lappin on his tail, was pinged for deliberate out of bounds, the umpire's vision obscured and missing that the ball had actually ricocheted off Lappin's knee.
The shot, from the junction of the 50-metre arc and the boundary line, couldn't have been more difficult, but Lappin nailed it to a now-deafening roar. Four points the difference, three minutes remaining.
Then, with under a minute left, Scott Camporeale found Lappin on a lead in the equivalent position on the other side of the ground, Geelong's Max Rooke right on his hammer. What Cats fans might have thought was Rooke simply "making him earn it" was instead (dubiously) interpreted as late contact. A 50-metre penalty was paid.
From the goal square, Lappin, incredibly, put Carlton two points in front with only 26 seconds left on the clock.
"I don't think I've seen a turnaround like this," said Channel 9 commentator Garry Lyon. "They (Carlton) were going absolutely nowhere, in fact they were going backwards." "Carlton are going to win the game!" screamed Lyon's commentary colleague Brian Taylor. Except the Blues weren't.
In fairness to BT, the call seemed eminently reasonable. It didn't, however, reckon on one last dramatic and controversial twist to this spectacular finish.
From the final centre bounce, Geelong's Corey fed out a quick handball to Glenn Kilpatrick, who got one out in turn to David Clarke, whose spearing left-foot daisy-cutter found a diving Peter Riccardi on the lead right on the 50-metre line. The Cat veteran picked himself up and walked back to take his kick as the final siren rang.
With half-a-dozen Carlton players desperately attempting to put him off, Riccardi crept closer and closer to the man-on-the-mark, Blues defender Simon Wiggins, eventually letting go from 52 metres out.
The wobbly-looking punt at first looked likely to miss, but then swung from right to left, just making it over the heads of the cluster of players on the goal line to scenes of pandemonium. Geelong had got up after all!
Wiggins and other Carlton players claimed as soon as the ball left Riccardi's boot that it had been touched as the Cats went crazy, swamping their teammate. But this was long before the days of the score review. There would be no court of appeal. Just Geelong clawing back a game it had never looked likely to lose until it almost was lost.
"I actually didn't watch the ball go through," a dejected Wiggins told the Herald-Sun after the game. "I turned straight to the umpire and said, 'I touched it', but he wasn't convinced."
A jubilant Riccardi said: "It was an ugly kick off the boot but it had the distance. It came off the boot shocking, but I knew I had enough purchase on it because when you go back and you are kicking from 50-55, you have actually got to kick the footy, and I knew I got enough on it."
Riccardi ended up playing 288 games for the Cats, played in three grand finals and won a best and fairest. But even 15 years later, it was his disputed post-siren matchwinner that still tended to be the thing everyone wanted to talk to him about. And for Riccardi, the source not only of pride, but plenty of fun.
"Simon Wiggins has said he was convinced he maybe got three or four fingers on it but it still went through. I have no idea though, it was impossible to tell," Riccardi told a local radio station in 2017. "But whenever I'm around Carlton supporters, I certainly like to say it was touched," he laughed.