IN HAWTHORN'S season of 100 quarters, when three points was the difference between a Grand Final appearance and oblivion, it's tempting - indeed almost irresistible - to isolate a single incident in the last quarter and pin everything on it.

It's a simple function of memory and human nature that amplifies the impact of errors late in a match, so events such as Ryan Schoenmakers dropping a chest mark or Cyril Rioli getting run down in the middle of the ground take on almost mythical status.

But can one moment, at once both awful and glorious, be the difference between a coach smashing his fist into the roof of his team's dugout in bitter frustration or appearing to shed tears of joy and relief?

For Hawthorn's Alastair Clarkson, denied by the cruellest of defeats and feeling it viscerally, it was a final quarter of missed opportunities that consigned his team to 2011 also-rans when they were a breath away from destroying Collingwood's season.

He used the word 'fatal' twice in his post-match media conference, talking about the Hawks' inability to land a fatal blow in that last term and then about having learned a fatal lesson.

Clearly, this defeat really was something like a death for the Hawthorn coach.

In truth, the Hawks' season might easily have died when Ben Stratton's knee gave out in round three, or when Stephen Gilham went down in round eight, devastating the club's stock of tall defenders.

It might have died when Jarryd Roughead's Achilles tendon ruptured in round 11 or when Lance Franklin's knee hyper-extended in the qualifying final. But it didn't, and when Clarkson's grief abates, surely he will come to acknowledge that getting within a heartbeat of a Grand Final appearance was an extraordinary achievement.

In his angry and anguished response to the loss to Collingwood, Clarkson brought to mind former Essendon coach Kevin Sheedy, who famously took to the stage at the Bombers' 1983 Grand Final wake and berated his players for being satisfied just with making the big match and then 'celebrating' a massive defeat.
 
Clarkson, for his part, spoke with undisguised disgust about such mealy-mouthed terms as 'bad luck' or 'a noble effort' and said he didn't want 'a fuzzy feeling'. He hurt and he wanted his players to feel that same hurt.
 
Essendon won the next two premierships after that shattering defeat in 1983, just as it won in 2000 after losing the epic preliminary final the season before to Carlton by one point. Clarkson, as a student of football history, will have those cause-and-effect events in his mind next season, and will make sure his charges do too.
 
Crucially, Hawthorn could manage just 11 marks in the frenetic final quarter, with Collingwood surging and the majority of the crowd of almost 90,000 baying for Hawk blood.

That cost them the game, said Clarkson, and on one fundamental measure he was right. But in this match of intense, crushing pressure, he might have pointed to a dozen fumbles, a score of turnovers, miskicks, brain fades, double-grabs … and so might Mick Malthouse have done had the tables been turned.

Paul Puopolo, the squat 23-year-old from Norwood who could not have imagined playing 20 matches in his debut year, threatened to be 2011's version of Stuart Dew, but his gritty, wholehearted late-season turn in attack could bring only 1.2 on this night.

And David Hale, the former North Melbourne journeyman who became a focal point after Roughead's demise, also might have turned the game with his strong marking and committed ruckwork, but he too couldn't convert when it was essential to do so.

As they did all year, the Hawks made a virtue out of their deficiencies against the Magpies, with third men up in the ruck contests helping the team to a 48-26 win in the hit-outs.

Jordan Lewis and Luke Hodge, mid-sized midfielders, each had six hit-outs, more than all but one of their Collingwood opponents. Michael Osborne, Brad Sewell and Ben Stratton also managed to get their hands on the ball in the ruck.

But crucially that dominance didn’t translate into a win in the clearances, which the Magpies led 39-34.

A season of patch-ups and pinch-hitters could go only so far, and Hawthorn's fell an agonising quarter short.

The views in this article are those of the author and not necessarily those of the AFL or its clubs.