Now they were amassed in their traditional place, on the members' wing, on Queen's Birthday, forgoing all the usual temptations as the 2017 Dees gather. "No snow, no skis, just a mighty Big Freeze," read their self-mocking banner. The crowd was more than 70,000.

But it wasn't just Melbourne fans. All watching footy fans would have been on some sort of alert. In the clamour for any one Jeremy Howe mark, what is sometimes lost is how many he takes.

By one loose count, he has been nominated for mark-of-the-week nearly 30 times - eight in one season - and won it 12times, and in 2012 won mark-of-the-year for a telescopic grab against Sydney.

Collingwood say he has taken a bona fide screamer in all except one game this season.

Some play 300 games and not once reach as high as Howe does every week, not even when being chaired off at milestones.

Recently, former Melbourne great Garry Lyon averred on SEN that Howe was the greatest marking player of all. Others agree.

One pundit said that in future, saying you had seen Howe take a mark would be like saying you saw Whitten play or Bradman bat (social media being social media, another pundit wanted to know why the kick had not gone to an open man on the other flank. That's high-level disgruntlement).

Work with us here. Historical perspective necessarily skews to recent. In John Coleman's brief prime, crowds used to move quarter-by-quarter to be at his end. Only some were Essendon supporters.

Peter Knights, Trevor Barker, Warwick Capper, Tony Modra; all took mighty marks by the planeload.

But it is hard to imagine any was more prolific than Howe. This was his second entry in two weeks. One minute after it, he took another, in the same position against the same opponent, that in a slower week might also have sneaked in for a mark-of-the-round nomination.

Students of footy could see it coming. Now that the game is so compressed, the kick likeliest to produce a screamer is a kick-in or one rushed out of besieged defence, hurried, high and hanging. As likely taker as any other is an athletic half-back or mid-fielder. This week's also-rans, Luke Parker and Jarryn Geary, fit this pattern.

The Collingwood players saw it coming. So did the Demons. Almost all of them had been near or under a Howe hanger previously, in matches and at training.

Former teammate Tom McDonald didn't even have to look to see, not before, during or afterwards. He just knew. Another former teammate, Nathan Jones, said later he thought this was Howe's best-ever. He should know. Collingwood's James Aish, newer to the Howe experience, could not stop a grin spreading across his face as his teammate soared.

Perhaps only Howe could not say for sure that he saw it coming. Typically, even the best marks are partly happy accident. Certainly he saw the ball, tumbling towards him on an inviting trajectory. Certainly, he would have sensed McDonald, in the step-ladder position. Certainly, he has absolute licence, franked for life. But not until he was airborne could he have known whether this would be all-time great, or a standard skyscraper such as the one he would take a minute later, or a solid, everyday intercept mark - his stock-in-trade - or even a mark at all.

So many incidentals had to synchronise. Howe, coming from around and besides McDonald, had to alight on his slightly stooped shoulder at just the moment that would boost him again, like a multi-stage rocket, until he was hovering - by one trigonometric measure - 3.5 metres above the ground. He had still to be facing the ball when torque might easily have caused him to twist away from it. He had to pouch it - so often, it jars loose.

Then, as McDonald tumbled aside, leaving Howe in free-fall, he had to break his landing, as a parachutist might, all the while cupping the ball.

He did. It's what he does.

And no one could say they didn't see it coming.

It didn't win Collingwood the game. It didn't necessarily even win the moment, for soon enough, the ball was coming back at him again. But it did give 70,000 a Queen's Birthday keepsake, and the Pies something to feel good about, and Howe a fillip as he looks beyond the bye to the second half of a developing All-Australian season. And it did provide cheer all round because in an ever more formulaic game, the speckie is the last unmitigated free-form all-areas act. As Howe shows, even you can see it coming, you never quite know what it is.

Last night, Howe was way up in the air again. But that was in a plane.