Saturday's grand final is obviously the most important game of the season. But you wonder if down the track, Port Adelaide's comeback victory over Fremantle in last week's semi-final might not rank too far behind.
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In fairness to Fremantle, had the Dockers nailed their chances, we could be having a different discussion.
But Port's capacity to attack kept it in that game, just as the same quality almost ended up pinching a famous preliminary win over Hawthorn. And it raised some longer-term questions about what are the most important qualities required by prospective premiership teams.
The Power has come from nowhere to within touching distance of that status. And it has done so on the back of a relentlessly positive and offensive mindset. Ken Hinkley's team is a joy to watch. And it wasn't a great surprise that plenty of neutrals willed it on over the past couple of weeks as a result.
Hawthorn and Port Adelaide ranked one and two for scoring this season. Grand finalist Sydney was fourth. It seems a fair indication that while successful finals football is supposed to be all about contested ball and tight defence, you do still have to actually score to win.
That's no great revelation even to the Dockers and coach Ross Lyon, either, who spoke pre-season about Freo needing two find two more goals per game. It didn't, indeed the Dockers' average dropped from 92.5 points per game to 92.2, yet with scoring down across the competition, Freo's ranking rose from 12th to seventh.
The loss for most of the season of Michael Walters certainly didn't help, either. But the semi-final loss and Freo's bottom line of a post-season finish of sixth compared to runners-up last year does beg the question whether Lyon and Co. will need to consider less caution and more risk for potentially greater rewards in 2015.
It's forward potency and attack which increasingly separates the best sides from the mediocre. Melbourne, for instance, did well to shave six goals per game from the cricket scores it conceded last year. But the Demons also scored even less than 2013 and didn't top 100 points in a single game. That's no recipe for climbing the ladder.
More than just the material rewards, though, the way Port Adelaide played its football in 2014 created a buzz that reverberated around the entire competition.
Given licence to run, to create, to execute the sort of dare and dash which draws people to play the game in the first place, the Power always carried an air of effervescence and hope.
And surely, that was a factor in its capacity over these past couple of weeks to continue coming back from near-impossible positions when more dour defensive units might instead have turned to loss minimisation.
As Hinkley put it after the loss to Hawthorn on Saturday night: "If you want to watch footy that's exciting and fun, come and watch Port Adelaide, because we won't stop that. We'll keep playing that way.
"I've got a great belief in the way the game should be played and the players believe in it too. The whole club believes in it. We want footy to be fun. You should be able to play brave, consistent, tough and ruthless football, and Port Adelaide looked like it most of the season."
And all we can add to that is "Hear, hear".
