HAS any season in living memory turned as much on as many little moments as has 2007? This really is a year for the ages, good enough, thankfully, even to get the focus back on the game and away from drug scandals for a few days.

Blink an eye, and you're sure to miss something of consequence. Switch off as a team, like the Western Bulldogs did yesterday, and a five-goal lead can become a near 100-point loss.

Stay tuned in, and you're always a chance to, as it might well become known after the last couple of weeks, do a Port Adelaide.

Whatever happens from here, the Power already has achieved something of note, the first team to beat Geelong for four months. But if it now goes on to win its second premiership, a very legitimate possibility, regardless of the margin, it will be a flag won by a matter of seconds.

Six of them, in fact. The three left on the clock when Port hit the front against Hawthorn at Aurora Stadium last week, and just three yesterday when it regained the lead over the Cats at Skilled Stadium. Take them off the clock this past fortnight and the Power is seventh, needing a win in round 22 just to stay in the top eight. Restore them, and it's second, with two home finals en route to a possible grand final berth.

The ripples have spread widely. They've been felt not only by Hawthorn and Geelong, but also yesterday by West Coast, whose job got a lot harder just a day-and-a-half after its gutsy win over St Kilda. The Eagles were eyeing off a Subiaco qualifying and preliminary final.

Now, unless Port stumbles, or beats Fremantle by a bit less than the Eagles can beat out-of-contention Essendon, they're going to have to win their first at AAMI Stadium. That handful of seconds might deny the Kangaroos, and Collingwood too, a spot in the top four and the double chance. But who'd argue that the Power hasn't earned its shot after yesterday's heroics?

Last week, when Mark Williams' side pipped the Hawks, it became one of the more unfancied second-placed teams of recent times, a rank outsider for a game between the two best-performed sides of the season. You can bet it will go into the first week of the finals a lot shorter.

Port may have got the Cats at a good time, Geelong with top spot wrapped up, Jimmy Bartel out with appendicitis, Cameron Ling a late withdrawal, and Mark Blake without a game under his belt for a fortnight. The "needed a loss" theory was always flawed, but seeing we were comparing Geelong to Essendon of 2000 last week, there's now another similarity, a first loss for either team in aeons coming in the penultimate round of the home-and-away season.

But you still have to admire the way the Power closed down a midfield that no other opponent has been able to curb, broached the AFL's top defence more often than any team since the Kangaroos inflicted that previous defeat back in round five, and held a potent forward set-up to a losing tally.

Not that Geelong doesn't have other dangers. Hawthorn was awesome in blowing the Bulldogs away once and for all in 2007 earlier in the afternoon at Telstra Dome. The Hawks were dominant in the clearances and inside 50s even when they trailed by close to five goals. And when the kicking "yips" subsided, things got decidedly ugly for Rodney Eade's disappointing team.

Luke Hodge and Jordan Lewis tallied 60-plus possessions and 10 goals between them, pretty handy supports for a forward set-up that already packs a punch with talls such as "Buddy" Franklin (an amazingly inaccurate 2.11 yesterday), Jarryd Roughead, Tim Boyle and Ben Dixon.

Had Buddy not looked intent on creating a different sort of record, the eventual 84-point margin might have been a lot closer to 150. The Kangaroos beat up similarly on Carlton on Saturday, and could put the Dogs to the sword themselves. But they'll still need the Hawks to fall at the final hurdle to grasp the double chance, and Hawthorn's SCG clash with Sydney suddenly doesn't look as intimidating. Paul Roos' team is now racked by injury and lacking the same steel it has had in large doses these past couple of years.

As for the Power, Williams has done a sensational job in remoulding this team, which won a premiership only three years ago but has changed by half since. The "ins" are already valuable parts of the machine.

But the remaining players from 2004 are almost, to a man, better now than then. If there was a brothers' Brownlow, Port would go close to winning every year, so good are the Cornes, Chad and Kane, and Burgoynes, Shaun and Peter.

The Power is exciting. The qualms about its physical strength and durability have all but been answered when it can pull off upsets like yesterday's. And no one could need any further convincing now that this team has a resolve to keep fighting it out, until every last second has expired.