• Hawk's perfect day: Hodge wins second Norm Smith
• Grand Final scorecard: Every Hawk player rated
• How Hawks rode the bumps back to glory
• Grand Final scorecard: Every Swans player rated

HAPPINESS for Hawthorn supporters is trying to pick how Saturday's 63-point evisceration of the Sydney Swans ranks among the 12 premierships won by the club.

Nothing beats the first flag in 1961. The Hawks endured more than three decades of derision and humiliation when they first joined the then VFL and it took until 1961 for the laughing to stop.

But there is a fair case to mount that Saturday's win was the second best in the history of the club.

Hawthorn endured so much in 2014 - a spate of injuries to its best players and the mid-season illness to senior coach Alastair Clarkson. Add the Brian Lake brain-fade, the pre-season Dayle Garlett;'s dramas, Cyril Rioli's hamstrings and the Lance Franklin departure and the Hawks have prevailed despite the sort of travails that would have overcome most clubs.

Hawthorn people already have their opinions.

CEO Stuart Fox: "I think this will go down as one of the most significant in the club's history.

"The year presented its challenges and we were able to bat them all back. We have been very resilient and focused as an organisation, so it's pretty special. It doesn't replace any of our other premierships of course, but this is very significant and a special achievement in the history of this club."

Peter Knights (club legend): "We went through a lot of adversity in 1976 when Peter Crimmins was ill. To me, that's the most emotional and satisfying premiership Hawthorn has ever won. But based on what has happened this year, 2014 would come very close.

"So much was stacked against us this year, so it's a testament to the strength of the club on and off the field. We were challenged and we met those challenges."

Peter Hudson (AFL legend): "This one rates so highly because we came up against an extremely good side. Of all the premierships we have won, I don't think we have beaten such a strong side. They're the toughest opposition we have faced. "

Gary Ayres (dual Norm Smith medalist): "I'd imagine this one would be up there with the club's greatest achievements. To cover the absence of key players as they have and to keep producing such great emerging talent is a real accomplishment and gave the club the ability to win the flag again this year."

And here is mine:
1. 1961: Nothing beats the first.
2. 1989: Back-to-back flags had been a millstone for the Hawks, who finished with 14 fit players against the rampaging Cats.
3. 2014: The football gods said not this year. The Hawks wouldn't listen.
4. 1971: Back from 20 points down at three-quarter time with none on the bench and Peter Hudson badly concussed.
5. 1976: Humiliated the year before, a premiership won amid great sadness.
6. 2008: Geelong had lost one game all year.
7. 1986: The Hawks had lost the previous two Grand Finals. Club may have imploded with a third.
8. 1983: The dawn of a golden era. Leigh Matthews adds 'premiership skipper' to his glittering CV.
9. 1988: Probably the most dominant Hawthorn premiership team, with interim coach Alan Joyce at the helm.
10. 1991: Too old and too slow, said the critics.
11. 2013: A grinding win that finally proved the 2008 flag was no fluke.
12. 1978: David Parkin becomes the first premiership captain and coach of Hawthorn.


Who's best: Hawks or Cats?

Channel Seven's Bruce McAvaney got in nice and early with his assessment of where this Hawthorn team stacks up in history. "The best team of the modern era - the last 50 years - produces its masterpiece," he said moments after the final siren on Saturday.

And with that starts the debate that will interest more than just Hawthorn supporters as to which is the better team of the last few years, Hawthorn or Geelong.

Together they have won six of the last eight flags – Geelong in 2007, 2009 and 2011, with the Hawks winning in 2008, 2013 and 2014. The Cats were simply brilliant in winning their flags in just five years as opposed to Hawthorn's seven, but not only did they lose to Hawthorn in the one Grand Final between the clubs, they also failed to win two on the trot, which the Hawks have now done.

Both clubs are modern marvels. The playing field, with its cost of living allowances and compromised drafts, has not been level for the past decade and teams aren't supposed to have achieves the success that the Cats and now the Hawks have.

The greatest team of the last 10 years? Perhaps the Hawks. They've sustained it for longer and have won the first back-to-back flags since the Brisbane Lions three-peated in 2003. But the Cats at their best were very, very good. The ideal is for premierships to be shared around, but football purists have loved watching the Cats and the Hawks at their prime.

How does Buddy's first season with the Swans rank? Picture: AFL Media

QUESTION TIME

A grade for Buddy?
He gets eight out of 10 for his year. He delivered just about all that the Swans could have hoped for – goals and thrills on the field, and magnetic presence off the field that dragged fans through the gates and put the Swans front and centre in the competitive Sydney sporting landscape. On that count he was worth every dollar they paid him.

His Grand Final was good, too, and he was probably the Swans' best player. The 'soft' and 'insipid' labels you could throw at some of his teammates did not apply to him. He was brutally worked over by his former teammates and came out of it reasonably intact.

WATCH: Buddy's battle on the big day
Not for a second would he be regretting the move he made to the Swans, but there is one more factor to consider. He won't play for another eight years as his contract stipulates, and based on what he used to tell people at Hawthorn before he made the switch, it will likely only be another four or five.

Best Bud now best of enemies

The Swans need to win at least one premiership in that time for the move to be ultimately be judged a winner for player and club and what will be gnawing at Franklin in the aftermath is that the Swans will likely never be as well placed to win a flag as they were before this year's Grand Final. They ticked every box in the lead-up but slipped up badly when it counted. It will only get harder from here.


So who wins it next year?
Surprise, surprise, you can already bet on the winner of the 2015 premiership and the first market I saw had the Swans and Hawks each at $4 and Port Adelaide at $6.

The same 22 that won the premiership on Saturday won't feature in Hawthorn's best team next year and two players who will be pushing for immediate selection will be midfielders Alex Woodward and Jed Anderson. Brendan Whitecross will return after ACL surgery and Jon Ceglar and David Hale will likely battle to be the No.2 ruckman.

Angus Litherland and Jonathan Simpkin will also have claims to play every week. Competition for spots alone will keep the Hawks in contention for another top-four finish again next season.

And then there's James Frawley. Speculation linking the free agent Melbourne defender to the Hawks just won't die down, although unlike Brian Lake, there were no signs of him sucking on cans in the MCG car park as Lake was two years ago.

The Swans have some thinking to do as well. Will Nick Malceski cash in on the free agency bonanza? Will Rhyce Shaw, who had a quiet Grand Final, saddle up again?

And what about Adam Goodes? He offered no clues as to his future after the Grand Final, but his preliminary final form suggests he has 12 more months in the tank if he has the mental capacity to get through another pre-season. If Goodes moves on and with Ryan O'Keefe now officially retired, the Swans should have room in their cap to make another free agency splash, perhaps not in the Lance Franklin mould, but significant nonetheless.

Already, the team to watch might be Port Adelaide. The wash-up of the preliminary final defeat to Hawthorn is that the Power were perhaps short one more big man. Disgruntled Bomber Paddy Ryder could be the missing ingredient for coach Ken Hinkley in 2015.

Alastair Clarkson has joined John Kennedy and Allan Jeans as three-time flag winners. Picture: AFL Media
Where does Alastair Clarkson now fit in the pantheon of the great Hawthorn coaches?
Pretty highly now. With three flags to his name he joins John Kennedy Snr and Allan Jeans, and we know how exalted they are in the history of Hawthorn. There are already suggestions that in the salary cap/draft era winning three flags in a decade puts Clarkson ahead of Kennedy and Jeans, who weren't settled with the same competitive balance measures.

He's not there yet but one thing Clarkson has on his side is time. Forget the annual Grand Final eve rumours linking to other clubs, he has at least five years left in him at Hawthorn - who knows what he could achieve in that time? And while on the subject of Hawthorn coaches, it was great to see Alan Joyce, a dual Hawk premiership coach but not spoken about with the same reverence at Hawthorn, present the Jock McHale Medal to Clarkson after the match.

WATCH: The Hawks soak it up as the siren sounds
How did the Hawks bring Brian Lake back from the brink?
For all the injuries and illnesses that afflicted Hawthorn in 2014, the episode that threatened to derail the premiership bid once and for all was the four-match suspension to Lake for his "choker hold" on Drew Petrie in round 14.

It sparked some un-Hawthorn like sound bites in the media as Clarkson, Hodge and Jordan Lewis all lined up to whack Lake across the head, and because it took place on a Friday night, the issue festered right through the weekend.

But as the Hawks convened the following Monday it became clear that Lake had been hung out to dry and that a number of players, not just the full-back, had been to blame for a 10-minute period in which the Kangaroos slammed on five goals while the Hawks gave away nine straight free kicks.  

At a brutally frank team meeting, senior Hawks players one by one admitted to letting the team down against North and absolving Lake of all the blame.

"We felt like we'd done the wrong thing by Lakey, and we spent some time making it up to him, I suppose," Sam Mitchell said.

Speaking after the Grand Final, Lake said he had immediately resolved to use the enforced break to his benefit.

"You can sit there for four weeks and say 'Poor me', but I thought I'd use it to my advantage. My body was feeling pretty good so I sat with the physios and our fitness guy Andrew 'Jack' Russell and made a plan of what to do.

"You've got to be careful when you're 30 years old, but a four-week break and just training into the finals was going to hold me in good stead.

"Some people make mistakes on the field; I made my mine that day and you can't hang people for that. But everyone got around me, they enjoyed me working my butt off in that period but they also saw how determined I was to get back and help the side," he said.



Ashley Browne: We've discussed this before, but you would like to think it is a response to the diving episode from a few weeks back. It's Grand Final day and almost anything goes. However, if it was for anything else, then shame on those who were doing the jeering.



AB: Didn't hear it and am keen to hear more details. If you were at the game, there are mechanisms to report anti-social behavior to the authorities and it is in the interests of all of us who just want to have a great day at the footy that you do so.

On a final note, thank you to all for your support of this column throughout the season. The good news is that we're not dismantling the goalposts just yet. With coaches to be hired (and maybe still fired), the free agency and trade periods about to start and the 2015 fixture announcement, there is much to debate and discuss, so for the next few weeks, 'After The Siren' will be sticking around.