The Age asked you for your favourite grand final of all time and we are counting down the top five in grand final week. Here, at No.5 with 8 per cent of the vote, is the 1970 decider, a game steeped in mythology, none more mystical than what happened at half time. 

The 1970 grand final is bound in mythology, none more mystical than what took place at half-time. His team trailing Collingwood by 44 points, Carlton coach Ron Barassi is famously said to have implored his players to handball at all costs, giving rise to arguably the greatest of all grand final victories.

In his 1999 book on the game, colleague Martin Flanagan spoke to many of its key players and the two coaches, Barassi and Collingwood's Bob Rose. The notion that Australian football was changed forever by a simple – albeit radical at the time – instruction was never fully substantiated, and in some key quarters vehemently denied.

"I did not invent the running game!" Flanagan recalls Barassi thundering, thumping the table between them in a manner to invoke a clear picture of how he delivered whatever message was conveyed during that famous interval. Barassi has always maintained the running revolution was the work of Len Smith, whose height-challenged Fitzroy teams were encouraged not to simply kick long to the next contest, but run at it and kick beyond.

The maverick Brent Crosswell, who would have won the Norm Smith Medal in 1970 had it existed, is adamant the legendary "handball, handball, handball" directive didn't happen. "I never heard it mate, never heard it," he told Flanagan, with the rider, "but I may have been in the toilet at the time." Whenever Barassi came in angry, Crosswell hid in the toilet.

What isn't disputed is the fury Barassi displayed when he entered the rooms, upending a wooden table laden with drinks and asking his players to tell him how many handballs the Blues had in the first half. The couple of meek offerings are wildly north of the mark; the answer is just 16.

Collingwood players recalled a very different mood. Some influential supporters had infiltrated the rooms and proceeded to backslap and cajole as if the premiership was already won. Ross "Twiggy" Dunne heard shouts of, "We've got 'em! This is our year!"

That it wasn't helped foster another legend – the Colliwobbles – as this most famous club endured five more unsuccessful grand final appearances in the next 11 years. No submission was as spectacular as this.

The Magpies had been rampant in the first half, but just before the break there were signs of grand final day's most drastic momentum swing. Peter McKenna kicked five first-half goals, but was knocked senseless in a marking contest that bruised teammate Des Tuddenham's hip. Both would be restricted thereafter, while Wayne Richardson's dominance was curtailed by a calf strain.

Late in the second quarter Alex Jesaulenko rose like an angel, Magpie ruckman Graeme Jenkin his stepladder, to take what was hailed as the mark of the century. Perhaps because of its old-fashioned purity, man-versus-man, it still evokes sentimental longing for the game of another time. A game that would change soon after Jesaulenko balletically returned to earth.

There were other hints of football's frenetic future, not least the Blues replacing Bert Thornley at half-time with small forward Ted Hopkins. Interchange was still years away, the sub unheard of, and it was rare to bring a reserve on so early in the game unless to cover for injury. Hopkins had 11 kicks for the half, four of them opportunist goals.

The crowd – 121,696 – is a record that will surely never be bettered. They saw Carlton win the second half 13 goals to four, storming to a 10-point victory that wasn't safe until the last two minutes.

Collingwood defender Colin Tully remembered the second-half assault as "like an avalanche" in which the besieged Magpie backmen didn't know whether to move up the ground to meet the running, handballing navy blue army, or wait on their heels for its arrival.

And of course there was Barassi. John Powers' fly-on-the-wall account of North Melbourne's grand final replay premiership seven years later immortalised him as "The Coach", but 1970 had already made the Barassi legend.