One of the most memorable AFL seasons for a long time is all set up for a suitably thrilling finale this weekend. And flexible fixturing has enabled what could well be a continuous catalogue of drama as the fight for positions in the final eight goes down to the wire.
It will have to be something extraordinary though, to top a finish to a home and away season which is the stuff of football legend, fought out 37 years ago, on this equivalent weekend back in 1987.
It was the first year of a 14-team competition with the introduction of Brisbane and West Coast. And the final Saturday of the regular season dawned with seven teams still fighting for spots in what was then a final five.
Four games -- Carlton versus North Melbourne at Waverley, Fitzroy versus Sydney at Princes Park, Footscray versus Melbourne at Western Oval and Geelong versus Hawthorn at Kardinia Park -- would be played concurrently, and would settle both the composition and order of finalists.
And all would prove nailbiters which kept the finals schedule in doubt until (literally) the final siren of the last one to finish.
The most romantic part of the tale was out west, where Melbourne, with champion skipper Robert Flower in his final year of football, was attempting to reach finals for the first time in 23 years.
The winner of the Demons' clash with Footscray would earn a finals spot provided Geelong, which was fifth, lost at home to second-placed Hawthorn, who would finish on top if they won and Carlton lost to the Roos. In the days of the final five, that meant a week off while the other four teams slugged it out. Sydney, meanwhile, needed to beat Fitzroy to guarantee a double chance.
How it all played out was scarcely believable.
The Demons, who'd won at Footscray just once in 11 years, lost star forward Garry Lyon with a broken leg early in the game, and still trailed narrowly at three-quarter-time. But with Flower on-song, they kicked 4.4 to the Dogs' 1.1 in the last quarter to win by 15 points.
Impending victory, however, was only half the battle, and as Melbourne's win became inevitable, Demons fans in the Footscray outer frantically clustered around transistor radios listening to the final minutes of the Cats-Hawks clash. They would hear what seemed like a miracle.
Geelong, needing to win to stay in the five, led the Hawks by three goals at the last change, and still by nine points at the 29-minute mark.
Step forward Hawthorn's champion spearhead Jason Dunstall, who promptly booted two goals in a minute to win the game, boot the Cats from the finals, and spark Demon pandemonium on the Western Oval terraces.
Such was the roar of Melbourne fans when the siren sounded at Geelong that confused Melbourne and Footscray players momentarily stopped, wondering what was going on. That put paid to the Cats and Dogs, the Demons were in, and Hawthorn, temporarily at least, was on top of the ladder.
But what about the other two games?
At Princes Park, Sydney was having all sorts of trouble with Fitzroy, and looked in serious danger of losing the double chance to North. The Roos were edging ahead of Carlton in a pulsating game at Waverley, where both sides had the advantage of an electronic scoreboard which constantly updated scores from other grounds, unlike the old-fashioned tin versions where scores were updated only at the breaks.
Late in the piece, Sydney had managed to get back in front of the Lions, but Carlton trailed North Melbourne by two points, and with Hawthorn having just got up at Kardinia Park, Blues hardman David Rhys-Jones, like most of his teammates, knew what that meant.
"From winning not being important for us, to becoming very pivotal, it all happened very quickly," Rhys-Jones told AFL Media in 2017.
With literally seconds remaining, Carlton moved the ball around the members wing, and from a boundary throw-in, Adrian Gleeson handballed to Justin Madden, whose mongrel punt was marked by skipper Stephen Kernahan, only 20 metres out but on a tight angle.
As he went back, the siren rang. Kick straight and Carlton had the week off and a well-earned rest and direct passage to a second semi-final. Miss and that prize would be Hawthorn's.
"The one thing about 'Sticks' in '86 and '87 was that he was a very accurate kick for goal," Rhys-Jones said. "We knew he had to kick it. I'm not sure if he was aware of it, but quite a few of us were."
Kernahan nailed the kick as the Blues piled joyously on their young skipper. Carlton had won the minor premiership and all those critical finals advantages. And boy, would that prove significant.
Hawthorn breezed past Sydney in its qualifying final, but after losing the second semi to the rested Blues, was then cast into what would prove a brutal preliminary final against Melbourne, where a mid-game wind change saw it kick against the breeze for three quarters.
Hawthorn famously won that game after the siren thanks to sharpshooter Gary Buckenara. But on grand final day, without the injured Dunstall, it came up against a rested, confident Carlton on one of the most unseasonably hot grand final days ever, a record 30.7 degrees, so hot that even famously long-sleeved Hawk veteran Michael Tuck was forced into a sleeveless number. The Hawks were spent, and the Blues romped home by 33 points.
A month later, it had become apparent that Kernahan's post-siren kick out at Waverley against North Melbourne was not only the perfect punctuation mark on what is still the most incredible conclusion to a regular season ever. It had also arguably won Carlton a premiership.
You can read more of Rohan Connolly's work at FOOTYOLOGY.