After playing 229 games across 12 seasons and in four premiership teams, Rodney Eade knows as well as anyone what's made Hawthorn the phenomenal success story it's been in football's modern era.
The word to describe the club which springs to mind before any other, he mused on the Footyology podcast recently, is ruthless.
I'd add another. Steadfast. Both those qualities are taking the Hawks back to where they've been so frequently over more than 50 years now. Which, if you needed any reminding, is a pretty high bar.
No other club has even come remotely close to the 12 premierships (all but one of their entire swag of 13) the Hawks won in 45 seasons between 1971 and 2015, an almost ridiculous average of one flag every 3.75 years across five decades.
Football equalisation appeared - finally - to have caught up with this amazing club after its last finals appearance in 2018. But here they are, back on the cusp of another September campaign after a five-year absence.
And, this time under the auspices of Sam Mitchell, those qualities of ruthlessness and steadfastness are again playing a major part, both in the Hawks' attitude to recruiting and list management, and in the way they approach their football.
It took some guts to cut as deeply into the senior list as Hawthorn did after Mitchell's first season as coach at the end of 2022. It was then around 1200 games of AFL experience walked out the door in one massive shake-up, the likes of Tom Mitchell, Jaeger O'Meara, Liam Shiels and Ben McEvoy gone.
Clubs have been shy of lopping too much senior experience in one hit ever since Melbourne did similarly in the late "noughties" and ended up not only spending a good seven or eight years stuck in the bottom four, but arguably ruining several potentially decent careers, too, talented youngsters broken by the weight of too much responsibility and not enough encouragement.
But the Hawks have replaced the experienced hands with a nice blend of youth via the national draft and enough maturity via the trade table and mid-season and rookie drafts to hold up even under pressure, as was certainly the case at the start of this season when Hawthorn lost its first five games.
Remember some of those wild claims that Hawthorn was indeed "tanking" for more draft picks early last year? It wasn't that bad this time, but there was certainly plenty of "cut too deep" accusations flying around, a view which now looks at best naïve. And typically, the Hawks have remained steadfast under the pressure.
Hawthorn is still comparatively young and raw (second youngest list this year and third-least experienced), but it doesn't have the same sort of vulnerability the likes of the Demons did 15-odd years ago.
Unlike the Hawks' famous 2008 premiership side and its subsequent dynasty teams, this band hasn't been the product of some conspicuous early draft picks but has been brought together from a variety of sources.
While the likes of Will Day, Connor Macdonald, Josh Weddle, Cam McKenzie and Nick Watson are prize draft picks, players like Dylan Moore, James Worpel and Blake Hardwick were all picks in the 40s or higher, and Jai Newcome a mid-season rookie draft selection.
And has any club traded better over the last two off-seasons than the Hawks, picking up ruckman Lloyd Meek first, then last summer, Massimo D'Ambrosio, Jack Ginnivan and Mabior Chol?
Steadfast is also an apt descriptor for Mitchell's attitude to how his team plays its football.
While many of his more experienced coaching peers are still obsessed with defence, often to their detriment of their own scoreboard potency, Mitchell has never downgraded its importance, even last year when the Hawks were getting smashed.
It's all about balance, and Hawthorn at the moment has it spot on, since Round 11 ranking second for points scored, and first for fewest points conceded.
Mitchell has had no reservations about making the structural emphasis of his team on pace and flexibility rather than height and strength, either.
How many of his peers would be prepared to field as many ground-level "goalsneaks" as we've seen in one team arguably since the days of Carlton's "mosquito fleet" in the early 1980s, in the shape of Moore, Ginnivan, Macdonald, Watson and Luke Breust.
Even the taller Hawk forwards such as Chol, Calsher Dear and Jack Gunston are as mobile as they are good in the air. And Mitchell has done everything possible to exploit that mobility in how the Hawks' use the football.
Hawthorn goes out of its way to use the width of the ground, running opponents ragged. It's reflected in a ranking of 17th since Round 6 for corridor use out of defence. But where for many teams that is a reflection of poor ball use and opposition pressure, the Hawks make it an asset.
It's one which, like Hawthorn as the sum of all those parts, really has stunned its rivals once it finished smoothing off the rough edges. And it's yet more evidence that this is a coach and a club which marches to its own drum.
It's required ruthlessness and steadfastness to expedite the rebuilding process, but after the briefest of absences, the Hawks are almost back in the finals ball game again. And after the amount of success they've enjoyed for so long at the pointy end of the season, who could possibly argue it's not exactly where they belong.
You can read more of Rohan Connolly's work at FOOTYOLOGY.