Richmond wrote their own history in emphatic and untroubled fashion on Saturday afternoon with a dynastic victory that simultaneously denied the Giants a historic first flag.
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The Tigers didn't just prevail, they kneecapped the Giants in a grand final that was over by half-time, when Richmond led by 35 points and the Giants had managed only one goal.
The second half rolled out into the biggest fizzer since the Geelong-Port Adelaide grand final of 2007, after a second quarter burst of five goals to none in the Tigers' favour split the game open and killed off the contest. Richmond triumphed by 89 points - 17.12.114 to 3.7.25.
The Tigers' second flag in three years, before a crowd of 100,014 at a heaving MCG, ensured their period of dominance as a team on the field after 30 years of pain has been franked with an appropriate return in premiership cups.
It entrenches the Tigers as the pre-eminent club of this period on the field, with financial and influential might off it.
If they needed a second flag to do so, Richmond can now claim to be back to the powerhouse team they were in the 1970s.
Their big-name recruit Tom Lynch, brought in as a free agent at the end of last season, had already made good on his return for Richmond but with two goals in a grand final he has proven the most influential recruit of any team in recent times.
The Tigers won in 2017 with a single key target in Jack Riewoldt. Lynch coming in changed the mix, but not Riewoldt's influence in the biggest game of the year.
In a match where the Giants could not buy a goal, Riewoldt had three to half time and shaped as a Norm Smith candidate. He ended up with five.
Richmond's pressure game smothered the Giants, who were overwhelmed, but to assign blame for their performance to stage fright would not do sufficient justice to Richmond's game.
On a dry, sunny day with no wind, the Giants could manage just two goals in three quarters. Their 2.7 to the final break the was the lowest three-quarter-time score in a grand final since 1960.
Giants forward Jeremy Finlayson in the same three quarters touched the ball once. The possession came late in the third term. He was not injured.
Every gamble, every storyline worked for Richmond in the same way it absolutely did not for the Giants.
Marlion Pickett in his first game of AFL football was undaunted and had moments of delightful invention. His blind turn at the start of the second quarter, coming out of the centre bounce, delivered the ball for Jason Castagna to take a spectacular mark.
Meanwhile GWS' big gamble, to back in the dubious fitness of captain Phil Davis, did not work at all. Davis was hobbled by the calf injury he suffered last week and was short of a step throughout the game, leaving the Giants hamstrung in defence.
- SMH/The Age
