It was midway through the third quarter of yesterday's grand final and the conclusion was already long foregone. High in the Great Southern Stand, a middle-aged Geelong fan danced along a precipitous concourse brandishing cardboard cut-outs of two premiership cups. One was marked 2007, one 2008.

His extravagance was understandable, but misplaced. The other cup should have read 1967, or 1989, or 1992, '94 and '95, or indeed almost any year in the last 44. If ever a premiership was won as redress and redemption, rather than simply to consummate a moment, this was it. Rarely in any sphere of endeavour can ghosts have been exorcised so wholly and ruthlessly.

It showed everywhere, and in every way. Milling in the players race as the formality that was the last quarter was played out was a conclave of lost generations. Most were crying, even - or especially - Billy Brownless. Grand final tears are nothing new at Geelong, but these were different, not bitter and salty, but cleansing. These were tears to dissolve years.

Mark Blake hid his behind sunglasses. He was the exception; he alone was living the experience of missing out in the big one, an old Geelong fate. He alone would have had a mind for 2008.

Somewhere in that madding midst, Gary Ablett snr reappeared. Romanticists might have seen this as a kind of second coming, affi rming salvation at last for all. Truthfully, it was as the proud father of two premiership players.

When the final siren sounded, there was an inordinate delay before the Geelong theme song began to play on the PA. It was as if someone did not dare to believe, not quite, not yet. But when at last it did ring out, it was as if on a continuous loop, never to stop. This also was right, for it had to echo in a lot of places, and the here and now was only one of them.

All those underachieving years. All those unfulfilled players. All those broken hearts, now mended at last. Geelong is one of only two clubs in the competition that still represents a particular place (Port is the other). It also represents a particular way of playing the game; Geelong's finest teams always have had fl air and flourish, too. It is why the club has always attracted a disproportionate number of creative minds to its cause. The saviours of 2007 were true to that tradition: not just the best team, but the best to watch, too.

But premierships are not won by weight of sentimental favour. Geelong showed from the start of this season that it would not be compromised in any part of its campaign when it suspended Steve Johnson because of an off-season misdemeanour.

This single-minded resolve was apparent in all its work again yesterday. At half-time, the game was as good as won, but still the Geelong players left the field with the heads down and eyes narrow, still in the attitude of combat. At three-quarter-time, when they might have been forgiven a backslap or two, they formed a huddle. Only in the last quarter did they relax. Back-line stalwarts Tom Harley and Matthew Scarlett have been po-faced all season, but now Scarlett began to conduct the Geelong cheer squad in its chanting, and Harley, while retrieving the ball from the gutter for a kick-in, shared high-fives with fans. The party had begun.

When the reckoning was done, the Cats had won by more than any previous premiership team, and Johnson, the selfsame ne'er-do-well of the summer, was the Norm Smith medallist. Deliverance was at every turn. Really, it could never have been otherwise. Geelong yesterday was making up for lost years. Port was a year ahead of itself, perhaps more. When Geelong won the minor premiership with four rounds remaining, Port was not even guaranteed to play in the finals. Its time is still to come, but for Geelong, now was not soon enough.

It meant that this was for the Cats a great season, a great occasion, a great performance and a great moment, but not a great grand final. The AFL had a patchy day. The pre-match tribute to retiring players was touching, but the delivery of the premiership cup to commission chairman Mike Fitzpatrick by a nymph suspended from a balloon was twee. Damn Nicky Webster. Fitzpatrick found himself reaching out for the cup in vain, a position Port came to know well. The amenity of spectators was spoiled again by the never-ending verbiage of the ground announcer. It was painfully loud, mostly superfluous and sometimes infantile, and in its entirety a gross insult to football fans, implying that they are not capable either of hyping up a grand final by themselves, nor of making their own understandings and appreciations.

Still, nothing would or could ruin Geelong's day. Gary Ablett was flattened early, twice, but that was the last time the match had the guise of a contest. The rhythms of the season quickly asserted themselves, each Geelong player drawing confidence from the next, until it suffused the whole team. It was a complete display, awesome in every way, and frequently exhilarating.

Harley, the understated captain, spent the last few minutes of the match holding the ball, as if to make sure that it was his at the final siren. When at last it rang, it came as a kind of anticlimax. Geelong remembered itself at the presentation ceremony, coach and captain thanking all the right people and patting each of the children who presented the premiership medals on the head. It was as if they were determined not to be West Coast. Geelong's 1963 premiership captain Fred Wooller presented the cup to Harley, so at last closing the loop.

True to the spirit of the season, the Cats were more animated on their lap of honour than during the formalities. Some gave away boots, others socks. The footballers have waited all their careers for this, but the fans have waited lifetimes. This, the players appeared now to recognise. The lap was like the season, a sustained performance.

In the prelude to the grand final, a perverse dichotomy was in play. The fans, knowing too much, were apprehensive. The players, knowing themselves, were calm. Pre-match, Gary Ablett was seen sharing a joke with a teammate, whereupon supporters gnawed off more fingernails. Now, though, player and fan were as one.

When at last the Cats were done, and dusk was falling on the MCG, they formed a circle on the arena, amid the detritus of the celebrations, and sung the theme song as lustily as it ever can have been sung. So were the ghosts and demons of 44 years driven out at last. Not one for Churchillian speeches, Harley chose just the three words that he knew would resonate with a club, a city, and a following liberated at last: "We are Geelong."