You might think that, as the scale of the Hawks' achievement grew, so would the acclaim. But the previous afternoon, as they paraded around the MCG with the cup, at one point several players gestured to fans as if to ask for more noise. They got it, but it was puzzling that they even had to ask.

Hawthorn were almost superhuman that afternoon, leaving West Coast far behind, and the occasion flatter for it. That was not Hawthorn's fault, but in an odd way, it became their liability.

The NRL finale the next evening was breathtakingly close, partly because human failing kept it that way. Then came redemption for one team, and damnation for the other, and a hero and a fall guy, and drama so compelling that the NRL grand final outrated the AFL's. Virtuosity was trumped by frailty and the triumph over it.

Is it possible to be too good for one's own good? Is perfection its own flaw? A ball can be too perfect. A golf ball without dimples would go nowhere. The Jabulani soccer ball used in the 2010 World Cup was literally seamless, and went every way but straight. A stadium might be faultless to a fault. Andy Murray objected to the roof at Wimbledon when it was installed because it blotted out all the elements, sun, rain, wind, "too perfect", he said.

Technology can be self-defeating. When Michael Schumacher and his Ferrari ruled formula one, even aficionados agreed that it was boring. This year still, former driver and team director Gil de Ferran despaired of FI's predictability. "It's the victim of its own success. It's too perfect. It lacks the human factor. People make mistakes. That's what makes them sympathetic."

Some don't make many. Big English cricket wig Pelham Warner once remarked as England bowled to Don Bradman: "This is like throwing stones at Gibraltar. But the Bradman innings that comes most readily to most minds is the duck he made at the end. Yes, it is an easy number to remember, and dramatically counter-intuitive, but it also colours him in a little; this immortal was made of the same stuff as the rest of us after all."

For a while, the West Indies were so good that lowly Australia discreetly avoided playing them, fearing irreparable harm. When Australia were at their peak a dozen or so years ago, a day came in a Test match at the SCG when a visiting fieldsman climbed the fence to retrieve the ball from an empty grandstand. The team were Zimbabwe. But the point was that Australia had become too good for anyone's good, foe or friend. In the face of the unchanging, we became indifferent.

For many reasons, Australians at that time did not cherish the supremacy as they might have. When the winning was non-stop, there were no points of reference. We forgot that Australia once had been plodders and presumed they never would be again. Only when it was over did we realise what we had lost.

This is Hawthorn's bind. They are a team for the ages, but because they rule in this age, their hegemony is called boring. American academic, the late Ted Cohen, once compared great sportsmen with great musicians in that the pleasurable fact of what they do frequently masks the mastery it takes to do it. "In both cases," he wrote, "something difficult is being done, and the full appreciation of that achievement must require an awareness of the difficulty." In other words, making it look (or sound) easy makes it easy in fact, in the mind's eye, when it is anything but.

One play: preliminary final, second quarter, seconds remaining, Taylor Duryea, working in a few centimetres of space on the boundary line at wing hits up Jarryd Roughead on the lead 50 metres away, and he, also pressed against the boundary, kicks the goal from 50 metres.

Soon afterwards, the half-time siren sounds. Understated, but sublime skill, an every-week happening for the Hawks, not standing out because so much of what they do is outstanding. They have made the brilliant commonplace, and so they have dulled our appreciation of the brilliant (Cyril Rioli excepted). There is a whole industry, perhaps 5000 people, trying to stop them at this, and a system, too, and no one can.

Of course, the Hawks had not looked so perfect when they played the Eagles in a qualifying final in Perth two weeks previously. But just as they started to look vincible, suddenly they became more invincible than ever. It won't last. It can't last. It might be over already. In the meantime, Hawthorn people should not even for a moment take it for granted, and the rest of us should admire what they are doing instead of protesting that they are still doing it.