MAX Rooke did not know what to expect, but he didn't expect this. Smiling dreamily and eyes flitting around the room, he expected more. He thought he'd feel more. He expected to cry.

He was happy, but in a bemused way rather than the delirious joy of some teammates. Indeed, his light mood was as much about wondering why he wasn't happier, like the fellow who loses his virginity and thinks was that it?

"I thought I would be really emotional and elated and probably have a few tears but it is a weird feeling at the moment," Rooke said after the game. "I guess because it wasn't that close, you didn't have the adrenalin pumping through the game. And because we knew we had it sewn up so early, I don't know if I am as happy as I should be. Or as excited as I should be. I don't know. I am happy, but I thought I would feel different to this. Over the next few days it will sink in.

"Because we won the game so early, it makes it feel a bit weird. I think towards the end of the second quarter, I knew we were in a great position and as long as we kept doing what we had to do, we were going to be fine and every time after that we seemed to get a goal. We played good footy. Everyone was awesome.

"The whole day was a bit strange. I had a bit of a weird job. I didn't play a great game, I did OK. In the first three quarters, I wasn't tagging Chad Cornes but I was told to go to him whenever I could and he got a fair bit of the ball, but I don't think he really got dangerous.

"We came into the day knowing that we had finished No. 1 for a reason. We kept telling ourselves that. We were No. 1 in attack, No. 1 in defence, No. 1 in stoppages. We were No. 1 in all those areas for a reason, we're a pretty good team and we knew if we played as a team we were going to be all right. And we were."

Rooke's sense of mild detachment following the match might also have been driven from the feeling that he could as easily not have been there. A serious hamstring injury almost prematurely ended his season until the club invested in the innovative, and perhaps speculative, treatment involving the injection of calf blood into the torn tendon.

"Obviously when I did it, it was real bad and I didn't know if I was going to get back this year. I'm just glad the club did everything it could to help get me right. I don't know if I would have been here today if I hadn't gone to Germany," he said.