Grand Final day burns images directly to your football-following soul. For better and for worse. A catalogue ever expanding as one emotion never fully replaces the other.

For that is the price of the ultimate day. No less than the players themselves you have to risk the heartbreak to earn the elation.

It drives people beyond the edge of reason.

How else do you explain the otherwise perfectly rational father and teacher with a passionate persuasion for Collingwood concocting a plan to “watch” last year’s Grand Final via the diagonal lines of the AFL website game analyzer for fear of what the game itself might inflict.

When finally he gave in to optimism he began to watch just as his Magpies collapsed into a draw. Torture knows no bounds.

This era has tipped the balance back Geelong’s way. The fatalistic dread of the 90s has given way to trust in the fates.

There are flashes that come easily to the mind’s eye. They are iconic images repeated so often you tend to forget you witnessed the instant of origin.

The staggering uncertainty that looped on the bounce of the ball in the middle of the MCG. In a climatic quarter resembling hand-to-hand combat the ball was finally out in the open.

You didn’t need hindsight to tell you the Premiership would be decided in that moment. Minutes before you’d pondered it might take a moment of sheer inspiration to break the lock between Geelong and St Kilda.

Enter Matthew Scarlett. Foot extended with an act of improvisation to define a campaign. From the toe-poke came the Ablett dash, the Varcoe handball and the arching Chapman kick that floated in the gap of the big sticks.

You couldn’t have been in your seat by the time it landed.

It’s the distinctive moment meshed with a multitude of Harry Taylor spoils and a mark and numerous fearsome Max Rooke tackles.

Two years prior it was a question of when you acknowledged that the wait was over. If ever there was a day to believe this was it.

The journey ran from Mooney to Mackie with enough goals to smooth the rough edges of a generation past.

On the day we were finally chosen the banner sent them out: Your Destiny Your Dream Your Opportunity. They came back definitively ours.

There was the Brad Ottens galloping tackle.

The scything series of handballs that started with Joel Corey and finished with a Jimmy Bartel goal in the closing minute of the opening term that served as the high point for pure skill and execution.

Ten minutes into the second quarter as Nathan Ablett kicked two goals the rush of adrenaline surged through the body because you knew. It was ours.

Sandwiched between those two Premierships was the cruelty of 2008. The missed opportunities before half time. Brad, why didn’t you pass? Cam, how could you hit the post from there? Tom, are you OK?

Then there are flashes of Cyril and Stewie Dew and an awful fate at the hands of a historical foe.

It hurt the way 1989 never did.

You didn’t see the moment of impact between Dermott Brereton and Mark Yeates, but you remember someone yelling “Dermie’s down” and the slightly thrilling sight of the crumpled Hawk on the turf.

It was instantaneously amplified by the exhilaration of a Gary Ablett goal in the ensuing confusion.

Instead of slinking from view Brereton wobbled forward and had the sheer arrogance to mark and goal.

If you are going to ambush a man, best leave no one to tell the tale.

Brereton occupied a peak he had never before conquered - the moral high ground. So infused with the example were the champions that by the first interval the die seemed definitively cast.

The next image is Gary Ablett floating over a cluster of humanity at a boundary throw-in, plucking the ball from the clear blue sky and snapping the best goal you ever saw.

He rose like a god amid mortals. He played that day like he did many others: on a higher plane.

You’ve never found it in your heart to be angry. The replay isn’t painful. In a perverse way it’s joyous. This was the football of your childhood and there was never a better illustration of it.

There was enough sadness and anger in the coming years to compensate. The replays of 92, 94 and 95 have never interested me and thus there are barely snapshots of those days left.

The first half of 92 contained optimism and an Ablett/Worsfold collision. The second half misery and enough Peter Matera to last a lifetime.

The decider of 1994 was irrelevant. The Cats finals campaign was the greatest three weeks you’d ever had at the football.

The following year was sheer disgrace and long ago banished from recall. You could have left at half time but months of anticipation kept you anchored to your seat quietly seething.

So we come again in good faith to gather the moments and hope for the best believing that once more the world will be ours.

Gerard Whateley leads the ABC Grandstand call of the tomorrow’s Grand Final