When GWS led by 21 points at three-quarter time, having held an advantage of somewhere between two and five goals for nearly the entirety of the second and third quarters, Sydney were gone.

When James Peatling won himself a high free kick in the forward pocket and snapped through a superb curling goal to put the Giants out by 20 points again and defuse a hot start to the final term, Sydney were gone.

And when Callan Ward shrugged a tackle from James Jordon, straightened, and snapped through a cracker with eight minutes left and all the wisdom and experience only gained from 17 years of blood, sweat and tears at the top level, Sydney were gone.

Except… they weren’t.

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This is the story of the eight moments that won Sydney a crazy, rollicking, classic qualifying final, that leaves them one win away from the grand final berth that seemed inevitable midway through the year, and decidedly evitable the longer it has gone.

It’s the story of miraculous one-on-two wins, brilliant kicks, the magnificence of Isaac Heeney. It’s the story of the Giants crumbling within touching distance of the finish line, powerless to stop the wave that crashed over the top of them at the death like, dare I say it, a red and white tsunami.

This is the story of an all time great finals finish.

Moment one arrives quickly enough after Ward’s goal that the Giants never get the chance to settle on their 13-point buffer. After Chad Warner, quiet all day but a colossus at clearances in the final term, wins the ball at half-back and begins a Swans chain forward, James Rowbottom, with precious little ahead of him on the wing, chooses the one option open to him: a one-on-one at half-forward between Jordon, the man who’d just been comprehensively bossed by Ward, against the taller, stronger Harry Himmelberg, a man with size enough to be a key forward in a previous role.

Jordon, though, makes amends for his earlier blunder brilliantly: aware Himmelberg is close, he slams the brakes on his lead to hold his ground where he thinks the ball will drop, and has the strength to keep the bigger Giant at bay.

Then, as Rowbottom’s kick sails over their heads, it’s Jordon who reacts much the quicker – and even more crucially, only he keeps his feet. It’s suddenly a loose, bouncing ball at half-forward, and Himmelberg is out of the picture.

It seems for a moment like the footy gods will be at their cruellest and take the ball out of bounds, but Jordon makes it right in the nick of time, so close the margin that he needs to tap it to his advantage to keep it in first before regathering.

Ahead of him, the Giants’ wall of defence, so miserly all day, has its bases covered. So when Jordon takes the highest-risk, highest-reward option of kicking to Will Hayward, running back towards goal with three Giants converging from all sides, the pass needs to be perfect to find his teammate.

It’s unbelievably perfect.

Not only does Hayward mark in between that closing throng, he does so without breaking stride, having dashed a good 70 metres to make the play.

James Jordon is a tagger. He was the unused medical sub in Melbourne’s 2021 premiership team, redeployed in a defensive role as a bargain recruit in the off-season. His job today was meant to be guarding Lachie Whitfield, not kicking it like him.

From close range, the number 9 makes no mistake. Game on again.

Fast forward to three minutes and 41 seconds on the clock, the margin now down to six points after a Logan McDonald miss: from a stoppage inside GWS’ 50, it’s again Warner who makes the critical break.

With three quarters and nearly 30 minutes of finals-like intensity on aching legs, Warner’s pick-up of a loose ball in the most dangerous part of the ground is simply spectacular. Without breaking stride, he bends down, cleans up the Sherrin with immaculate hands, accelerates, then bangs it as long as he can out of danger.

The Giants are waiting for such a kick. The only man past the centre line is Connor Idun, a consummate defender both in the air and marking talls and smalls; also vying for Warner’s kick as it begins its ascent downwards is Sam Taylor, the backline brick wall with ten intercept possessions and who has barely given Sydney’s trio of tall forwards a sniff.

Idun is 191 centimetres tall, Taylor 196. And sandwiched in between them, all 178 centimetres of Tom Papley, the diminutive goalsneak who’s missed the last month and a half through injury and who has behaved all afternoon like a man desperate to pick a fight with anyone he comes across – even the opposition’s footy boss.

When Papley was recruited by the Swans with the 14th pick of the 2016 rookie draft, nearly nine years ago, he was an apprentice plumber who’d been passed over by every club in the regular draft.

Back then, he had slim to no chance of becoming an AFL footballer, just as he has slim to no chance of winning this contest against two bigger, more powerful Giants defenders.

Isaac Heeney celebrates a goal. (Photo by Matt King/AFL Photos/via Getty Images)

But Tom Papley has spent a footy lifetime raging against all those that told him what he couldn’t do.

As the ball comes down, it’s Idun in the best spot; Papley leaps early, hangs in the air for a second. If he makes any contact with the Giant, it’s a free kick; time it wrong, Idun will just mark anyway.

Somehow, he gets a fist to the ball as he falls; it’s enough to just divert its path away from where Idun expects to hold it in his hands, and it clangs out. In a stroke, a two on one with two known aerialists has become a two on one against one of the AFL’s best ground-ball crumbers.

Papley is in his element: reaching the ball first, he skirts around the oncoming Idun and handballs to Isaac Heeney, the man who more than anyone has dragged the Swans back into this game after half time.

There was no other choice, but Heeney seems destined to be instantly enveloped by Lachie Whitfield, matching him stride for stride and close enough that he can probably smell whatever gel or oil he uses to make his hair look still so immaculate even with three minutes left of a qualifying final.

But there’s a reason Heeney was the Brownlow heir apparent until his mid-season suspension: somehow, through a combination of speed, strength and pure aura, he turns a two-centimetre gap between him and Whitfield into half a metre in a blink.

As he looks up, Matt Roberts is streaking back towards goal, Finn Callaghan in pursuit. But he’s next to no chance of being used.

From 60 metres out, Heeney goes for the jugular. And like an obedient dog, the ball obeys him, landing in the goalsquare and skimming through the big sticks.

Scores level. And for Heeney, a third goal in a stunning afternoon, and perhaps the most important he’s ever kicked.

Up until now, the Swans’ moments have mostly been of the attacking variety – a team with nothing to lose producing Herculean feats of derring-do to drag themselves back into the contest.

But Warner’s next moment won’t be on any highlight reels when his career ends; after winning a free kick, Stephen Coniglio looks to hit up a free Josh Kelly, at half-forward and some ten metres clear of the star Swan.

As the ball arcs towards him, the Chad has only one option: he dashes to close the gap, turns his body at the critical moment, and manages to get half a fist to the ball to knock it clear before it can get to the Giant. A throw-in means safety… for now.

As the Swans surge forward from the resultant stoppage, only to hit Harry Perryman at half-back, it’s time for another defensive moment for the ages.

Perryman goes out wide to where the numbers are: as it was a few minutes ago, it’s a two-on-one in the air with the Giants holding the numerical advantage.

This time, it’s Nick Blakey against Xavier O’Halloran, the sub, and Callan Ward. It’s the sort of situation where one of the two will usually block the solo act, legally protecting the drop zone for the other to mark.

But not here: O’Halloran goes only for the mark, as does Ward, and as the former leaps, the latter is knocked off balance and becomes a mere spectator on the contest. Blakey, the taller man, is able to knock it clear; the moment it hits the ground, the Swans swarm.

That there are so many begs the question of the Giants: at a time when the backline should have featured as many numbers as possible to stave the Sydney surge, when Logan McDonald gathers and gives quickly to Errol Gulden, who wobbles a kick inside 50, the arc is wide open, Taylor a mile off the ball and not closing fast enough, and two Swans to none where the footy is.

It bounces, as if with a mind of its own, over Perryman’s desperate leap, taking another Giant out of the equation.

As Papley closes on it, there’s yet more cruelty: just as Taylor arrives on the scene, the footy takes another wicked turn, wrong-footing the Giants star and seeing him not only overrun the contest, but trip over doing so.

With only seconds to spare before more Giants converge, Papley handballs forward to Joel Amartey: hitherto barely sighted, he has the time to face the goals, size up the kick, and dribble through the go-ahead major.

Pandemonium. The Swans, somehow, are in front.

After a Giants free kick at the next centre bounce, Sydney will need to defend on their last line: that they do, with multiple ball-ups as both sides throw themselves at the ball, one trying to prise it free, the other desperate to keep things as tight as possible.

It’s Warner again who makes the critical break; setting up behind what has effectively become a rolling maul and guarding the goalsquare, a quick despairing snap from Toby Greene while being tackled can’t pass him. Again, with remarkable cleanliness, Warner gathers, and in the split-second available to him makes the perfect clearing kick – wide and to the boundary close enough to a teammate in Braeden Campbell that if and when it goes out he can’t be pinged for insufficient intent.

After a throw-in and two more ball-ups, the ball remains at half-back for the Swans, with 38 seconds to defend. Cue one last pair of massive, game-deciding moments.

Usually, ruckmen in this situation are trained to tap it at their feet when holding onto a lead, keeping the ball in tight, following up with tackles and by and large keeping it close.

Brodie Grundy thinks differently: outpointing Kieren Briggs, he spikes the ball 15 metres closer to safety, because he knows what the Swans have in spades, what has won them this match in the final quarter. Speed.

First on it is another hero of the day, Braeden Campbell, whose injection into the match as sub has given the Swans a pacy, lovely-kicking attacker forward of the ball. His goal early in the last got them believing, and it’s been his hand in three inside 50s in his brief time on the field.

Charging onto the loose ball, he knows exactly what to do: holding the ball for as long as he can, he torpedoes as far away as he can muster, not caring if it goes out of bounds, just that it makes the Giants go end to end to return it inside 50.

In the end, he gets it near-perfect; Idun narrowly keeps the ball alive, but it’s now in defensive 50, and barely 20 seconds remain.

There’s still time, though, as Idun passes to a free Lachie Ash at half-back, who runs, has a pair of bounces, and spots a free Peatling wide for the last roll of the dice.

Cue the last decisive moment: Ash’s kick is a shocker, wobbling past Peatling and out of bounds. The ball game is, at last, decided.

This is what it takes to win a final.

Winning two-on-one contests as an undersized rookie plumber turned AFL superstar.

Taking your moment after a nothing game to create a moment neither you nor anyone witness to it will forget in a hurry.

A defensive spoil from a star midfielder. A brilliant kick from the stopper.

It’s Sydney through and through.