By that stage, West Coast's unconvincing resistance had been buried – it really ceased the moment that Jack Darling fluffed his lines and dropped a gimme mark in scoring range, signalling a goal orgy at the city end, where Isaac Smith dribbled one from near the front row and Jack Gunston enjoyed fine midfield dining.

Hawthorn's premiership treble marks the club as the superior of the Brisbane Lions of 2001-2003, which fell just short in seeking to match football's most enduring team record – Collingwood's four premierships from 1927-30.

On what transpired on this afternoon – and on the advantage in skill that the Hawks have steadfastly maintained – Eddie McGuire should be concerned about that record.

Much as it will hurt Geelong, Clarkson's commandos have surged past the Cats of 2007-2011 as the greatest team of all over the past two decades, too.

The four-in-a-row should be impossible in a draft and salary cap system, but we can safely predict that the market will favour Hawthorn to complete the four-peat. Who would bet against them after witnessing the latest groundhog grand final against a non-Victorian victim?

Dermott Brereton, who played in five flags and whose legacy is being matched by Hodge's Heroes, said a fourth flag on end "would be miraculous", given that these were the oldest premiers yet, though Dermott thought it still possible.

If the age of this group steepens the incline in 2016, the other top teams aren't exactly convincing — Fremantle lacks depth, as does Sydney, while North finished eighth. West Coast - who knows? If challengers come from further down, they begin some lengths behind Clarkson's mob.

Hawthorn defied all manner of verities in winning their third flag on end and a fourth under Alastair Clarkson. The oldest premiership team in history defeated a younger side on the hottest grand final day yet experienced.

You're not supposed to win a flag after losing the first final on the road.

You shouldn't win one after travelling twice to Perth. You shouldn't be premiers with pretty much the same team as last year — with a modest two changes.

And, in a brutal combat sport, you're not supposed to be propelled by men who are 31 and 32 years of age. Yet, on Groundhog Saturday, Sam Mitchell, Luke Hodge and Shaun Burgoyne were again among the premiers' best four or five performers, their efforts surpassed only by Cyril Rioli. Brian Lake and Josh Gibson weren't shabby either.

Hawthorn's prospects of equalling the Collingwood record, of going where no post-war team has ever gone before, will require more surgery to this team than the Hawks experienced between 2014 and 2015, and the usual revisions to game styles.

As the oldest premiers yet in the game's history, the Hawks understand they will require an infusion of younger blood, and that some of those names who played for Box Hill and missed the cut — Billy Hartung, Jed Anderson, Will Langford, James Sicily or whoever — would have to graduate to regulars.

"We've got to get better," said assistant coach David Rath, the cerebral former biomechanist who's been Clarkson's constant since the coach started at Hawthorn. "We'll have to inject a bit of youth probably and try and re-energise things."

Brereton concurred on the necessity of youth to give Collingwood's record a fright. "They'll need new talent to come through."

Rath saw this year's flag as different to the 2014 grand final, in that it was achieved with ball control, rather than a more overtly physical approach.

"I thought last year was more based a lot on physical, hard contested, a really hard contested game from the start. That was probably the key to that game.

"This game was probably our ability to control the game, the thing that got us across the line."

As in Groundhog Day, the eventual outcome is the same, with different paths to the same end point when we wake up and see Hodge with the cup. It's another frightening gauge of Hawthorn's all-round capabilities that they can win playing a brutal brand, and prevail with highly skilled composure.

In 2016, the Hawks will likely be without Lake and David Hale, but will saddle up the other four veterans. Matt Suckling is out of contract and may or may not remain. The club's salary cap is tight and it says it is not planning to score a major free agent, or well-paid recruit from elsewhere.

Thus, the new personnel will mainly come from within, which is also where this astonishing group finds motivation.

If they have enjoyed repeated good fortune on the injury front, they've also been challenged by adversity — such as Clarkson's illness, and this year by the death of assistant coach Brett Ratten's son Cooper, which according to president Andrew Newbold, "gutted" the club.

"I think the Cooper Ratten thing for me made the biggest difference," said Newbold of the 2015 campaign. "It gutted everyone at the club, it took us a while to recover, you saw what we did against Port Adelaide, we weren't good.

"But when it really matters ... this group, their best is the best."

Newbold says that the club will only give itself a chance to repeat for the fourth time by NOT explicitly aiming to win the flag.

"Don't worry about winning it, to maintain your position in this competition, we've got to improve ... we'll sit down and work out how we improve.

"We don't set out at the start of the year and say we're going to win it, we set our to improve ourselves. Whether we won today or not, we're a better club than we were last year."

Forward Luke Breust, echoed the club mantra from 2014 and 2015 in assessing how the fourth mountain might be scaled.

"We'll try and put ourselves top four and who knows?"

Burgoyne, a four-time premiership player, with a finals resume that rivals the best of modern times, observed that the Hawks succeeded by focusing on the present, and that they would likely do the same in 2016.

"We'll probably approach it the same way we approached it [this] year — talk about the here and now. As good as it is, in six months time this will be the past and we can't really reflect on it."

They will celebrate, but complacency is a virus to which Hawthorn has developed an immunity.

Too old, too slow, too bloody good. For this group, provided they find fresh faces, the Collingwood record is anything but Pie in the sky.