FOOTY ended 2016 on a spectacular note, what with the brilliant finals series and great Grand Final culminating with that once-in-every-62-years event, a Western Bulldogs premiership.

The new season opened with entertaining games, albeit with predictable results on Thursday and Friday night. But then came 'Scintillating Saturday', four results that each deserve an essay of their own, which for the sake of brevity, we will illustrate with just the key takeaways, but which have already left us giddy with the hope that this season will be as dramatic and even as promised.

Only three sleeps till the start of round two. Bring it.

• Around the state leagues: Who shone in your club's twos?

Bombers are back

Mark Harvey is an Essendon assistant coach. But he is an Essendon person first and foremost – 206 games and three premierships affords him that status. He has seen and done plenty in the red and black, but even he couldn't help but be blown away by the scenes at a frenzied and raucous MCG on Saturday night in front of more than 78,000 fans as the reconstituted Bombers beat Hawthorn by 25 points.

"Yeah, I did actually," when asked by this column afterwards whether he was able to divert his attention momentarily away from the game to take in the excitement of it all. "I saw 'Sheeds' walking across the ground and I didn't realise how much he had done before the game and he told how me he got the fans up.

"It reminded me of a Grand Final, with the crowd noise, the excitement and the emotion and it inspired them tonight. The club needed a win like this to get us back on track and headed in the right direction. It is part of the comeback story."

It was a comeback game in every sense with a sprinkling of Essendon greats enjoying the buzz in the rooms post-match including former president David Evans, who has largely stayed away from the club in the immediate aftermath of the events of the last few years.

The Bombers were better than Hawthorn when it counted most on Saturday night and are now firmly in the discussion for the teams that could make the lower reaches of the eight.

"We are a good footy team," Harvey continued. "I looked at the guys who hadn't played for the last 12 months and they were overawed with what happened tonight. I'm happy for them … and happy for the guys who played last year when we really didn't have a proper team. A lot of confidence will come out of this."

Swans taste their own medicine

The numbers told the tale at the SCG on Saturday. On a greasy day, supposedly made to order for the strong Swans midfielders, it was Port that held the ascendancy, winning clearances (47-40), centre clearances (18-10) and contested possessions (161-139).

Travis Boak was magnificent in his 200th game, as were Ollie Wines and Brad Ebert and with Paddy Ryder giving Port excellent first use of the ball – in his first game since 2015 – this was the best win by the Power since 2014.

It is a big year for Port. Chairman 'Kochie' has declared 2017 one of those 'finals or bust' types of seasons and everyone at Alberton is on notice. It seemed a brash and unnecessary call at the time, but it might have pressed the right button, because for most of the afternoon, Port looked the better side.

We're not writing the Swans off after one week. That would be folly. But for all the undoubted cream at the top, this team will go as far as its bottom six players will take them. John Longmire needs to coach them hard, and quickly.

Saints cop a Deestroyation

Rex Hunt is back on the 3AW airwaves, so what better time to drag out one of his favourite lines, one that really summed up the events late Saturday afternoon at Etihad Stadium.

The Saints were super confident about winning this one, and why not? Fourteen straight wins over Melbourne, which had lost 24 of its last 25 at the venue and then, holding a 23-point lead at quarter-time? You would feel confident.

But Melbourne turned this game on its head after the first break. Clayton Oliver and Jack Viney took control in the midfield, Jordan Lewis added his trademark steel and the Demons kicked the next 10 goals to take control of the match.

This was a smashing, and none of Carlton, Geelong, Fremantle, Richmond or Essendon in the next few weeks should hold too many fears for the Demons. They take control in the midfield and they can score – both recipes for sustained success through the season. Add ambition and aggression, two other Melbourne trademarks this season and it is clear that a very good football team is taking shape before our very eyes.

And keep an eye on Oliver. A black book special as they say in the racing game.

As for the Saints, it is a loss that sets them back on their heels and adds more urgency to next week's trip to West Coast, where they'll hope to perform a whole lot better than last year where they kicked three goals and lost by 103 points. And they'll travel without their spiritual leader, Nick Riewoldt. It will be a big test for their newly minted leadership group. 

Clayton Oliver looks set for an enormous second year. Picture: AFL Photos

Lions deliver on Fagan's promise

In a story that will appear in the Round 2 edition of the AFL Record, new Brisbane Lions coach Chris Fagan said this when asked what supporters can expect when they go to the footy this year.

"Our fans will see a team that gives it everything it can for as long as it can. They'll see a team of young blokes where they can see the improvement and good defensive structures and offensive systems that hopefully will grow and grow as the team becomes more skilful and confident."

• Nine things we learned from round one

They ticked all those boxes in a stirring first-up win, blowing the Suns out of the box early and holding on late when the home team had all the momentum. The last time the Lions conceded fewer than 100 points to a team not named Essendon or Carlton was in round six last year (97 points to Sydney), which points to some early success in Fagan's quest to fix a leaky defence.

Another stated aim for the year was to become hard to beat at home. That quest starts against Essendon on Saturday night at the Gabba (Kevin Mitchell willing) but armed with a gritty win away from home already, they should enter that clash with great confidence and their fans should turn up in big numbers. 

Other observations 

1. With 21 goals, seven multiple goalkickers, 11 goalkickers overall and dominance all over the ground, Adelaide's emphatic 56-point win over flag favourite Greater Western Sydney is the one result that might send a few shudders through the rest of the competition despite it only being round one. The might of Adelaide's scoring power was on show and that was with the Crows giving Tex Walker an extra week to overcome a hamstring niggle ahead of a huge round 2 visit to meet Hawthorn at the MCG. Rory Laird was the star with 40 possessions as the Crows by and large kept the ball away from the Giants' key playmakers. In one afternoon of footy, the Crows moved into the fifth line of betting for the flag at $9.00. The Giants still sit atop, but for how long? 

2. This column likes a bit of theatre at the footy as much as anyone. Good v evil. Right v wrong. Control v KAOS, that sort of thing. But there was something a touch venomous about the jeering premiership player Travis Cloke received from the Collingwood faithful at the MCG on Friday night. It's not like he was a star player who walked out on the club like his father did when he quit Richmond and 'joined' the Pies all those years ago. It's not easy being a Pies fan; they're forever being told theirs is the greatest football club in the land when there's not a scintilla of supporting evidence. And compare Cloke's reception with that afforded Drew Petrie by the North fans at Etihad on Sunday. All class. And it was pretty brave from Petrie, playing through with a broken hand suffered in the first few minutes that will now keep him sidelined for several weeks. He gained plenty of new admirers at his new club and lost none at his former club.

3. The Western Bulldogs would appear to have all the ingredients in place for a fair-dinkum crack at their premiership defence. History suggests back-to-back premiers usually turn over two or three players at a minimum. But the Dogs could have considerably more than that with Robert Murphy, Matt Suckling, Stewart Crameri, Lin Jong and Cloke all reasonable chances of being best 22 players at the end of the season. The Dogs resembled the Hawks at their 2013-15 best against the Pies, conceding clearance and contested ball numbers but killing the Pies on the counterattack and winning reasonably comfortably. And with moves such as Murphy and Jason Johannisen swinging through the forward line, it would seem that coach Luke Beveridge has already moved on from last season and changed the Dogs' game plan considerably, with versatility a key requirement.

4. Jordan Lewis (32 possessions, six inside 50s) and Sam Mitchell (38 possessions) made excellent debuts for their new clubs after their big-time trades away from Hawthorn at the end of last season. The Hawks had their issues on Saturday, but the ostensible replacements for that championship pair did pretty well. Tom Mitchell (38) was his team's best, while Jaeger O'Meara had 23 touches and worked his way into the game. All up, list managers would have been well pleased with Tiger pair Dion Prestia and Toby Nankervis, new Saint Jack Steele, new West Coast ruckman Nathan Vardy and former Carlton defender, now Cat, Zach Tuohy prominent for their new clubs.

5. Nat Fyfe versus Patrick Dangerfield wasn't quite as advertised. All up, they were matched together for 26 minutes, with Fyfe holding an 8-6 advantage in disposals in that time, according to Champion Data. There were flashes of excellence from both, but in a game that got a bit narky – even with Hayden Ballantyne watching from the stands – the main takeaway from Domain Stadium on Sunday night was Geelong's polish and Freo's lack of it. It was a more even performance than we have come to expect from the Cats, with Dangerfield and Joel Selwood good rather than great. Sadly for the Dockers, another summer has come and gone without a notable improvement in their skill levels.

6. With a combined score of 1865 points, this weekend was the busiest opening round, in terms of scoring, for the past five years. Hopefully this is a trend and not a quirk and we expect that as the weather turns, scoring will cool as well. But from the time Richmond started taking more risks in the opening minutes last Thursday, the trend seemed to be for more attacking football across the board. Let's hope it continues.

7. Not sure there will be too many better coaching performances not just in football, but in all Australian sport this year than Adelaide's Bec Goddard leading Adelaide to the inaugural AFLW premiership with half her playing squad living more than 2500km away in Darwin.

8. Well, we didn't quite get there with our prediction of 413,000 attending the opening round of footy. But 400,401 did, making this weekend the most-watched round of football in League history, smashing the 371,212 who went to round 15 in 2013. 

Finally, this column stuck its neck out last week with some predictions, so how did we do?

Carlton v Richmond (MCG)
Prediction: 72,000
Actual: 73,137 

Collingwood v Western Bulldogs (MCG)
Prediction: 69,000
Actual: 66,254

St Kilda v Melbourne
Prediction: 35,000
Actual: 36,249 

Sydney v Port Adelaide (SCG)
Prediction: 32,000
Actual: 33,129

Essendon v Hawthorn (MCG)
Prediction: 85,000
Actual: 78,294 

Gold Coast v Brisbane Lions (Metricon)
Prediction: 16,000
Actual: 12,710 

North Melbourne v West Coast (Etihad)
Prediction: 26,000
Actual: 21,997

Adelaide v GWS (Adelaide Oval)
Prediction: 42,000
Actual: 43,993

Fremantle v Geelong (Domain)
Prediction: 36,000
Actual: 34,638 

So how did we get there? For starters, the balmy, cricket-like weather helped, as did the fixturing with all sorts of juicy match-ups. But the AFL had pledged to make going to the footy more enticing for fans and early doors, they have delivered on that promise.