THE 2007 grand final was not a contest. It was a victory dance. Geelong has won everything this season but has been breaking football hearts for more than four decades.

Yesterday it put an end to all that by wiping the floor with Port Adelaide. The 119-point margin was the greatest in the game's history. The Cats might not be the greatest team of all, but yesterday they became the greatest premiership team of all.

Geelong has waited 44 years for a premiership, and if yesterday's boil-over was a disappointment after the successive one-point thrillers that went before it, there was no sense of that among the partisan crowd of 97,302 when the siren announced the end. All Victorians have been waiting seven years for the cup to come home.

The powerbrokers among the faithful could not quite believe it. The recently retired Victorian premier, Steve Bracks, refused to accept victory until three-quarter time and said so after the final siren.

"I feel numb," he said. "I never thought I would see this in my lifetime. Now I think this team can do anything. They could be another Brisbane, they are so talented and still so young." Club chief executive Brian Cook embraced president Frank Costa 16 minutes into the final quarter.

Both seemed stunned and close to tears as they walked down to the rooms. "I couldn't describe how I feel," said Cook. "Yes, I can. It's a dream come true."

Added Costa: "This is just so special. You cannot imagine how special this is for our town and the people of Geelong." To his credit, the humiliated losing coach, Mark Willams, shook the hand of every Geelong player after the final siren, and seemed almost pragmatic in his analysis of his proud club's failure. He focused instead on the winners.

"They had 44 years of torment, and they let it all hang out today," he said.

Matthew Scarlett, superb in defence yesterday, was one player who delivered and received some home truths after the Cats' annus horribilis of 2006.

His assessment yesterday's annihilation was simple: "All the things we planned to do, we did." Certainly at times it looked like a training run. Scarlett added: "All year we were just ruthless, and enjoyed playing for one and other and didn't want to let each other down. It's happened too many times in the past. It's not going to happen at Geelong any more."

The Cats never looked troubled, although they led by only seven points going into time on in the first quarter. But by quarter-time the situation looked perilous for both Port and the contest.

It was the 31-minute goal by Brownlow medallist Jimmy Bartel that changed everything, given the manner of the goal and the five other players who contributed to it — beginning with Joel Corey, then David Wodjinski, then Gary Ablett with a poetic handball, then James Kelly and Joel Selwood, who kicked superbly to Bartel. Geelong went into quarter time with a 23-point lead.

Steve Johnson won the Norm Smith Medal. In a season punctuated by off-field scandal — much of that involving drugs and alcohol — Johnson must surely have won the role for which he has been audtitioning since early May: that of the AFL's new poster boy.

Johnson's fall from grace was so dramatic that his final off-season drinking binge saw him shunned by his teammates and suspended for the first five rounds of the season.

Johnson, 24, swore off alcohol and returned to the team in the first of the Cats' 15-match winning streak. Yesterday he kicked four goals, narrowly defeating the devastating Paul Chapman for the award, last won by a Cat in 1989, when Gary Ablett snr kicked nine goals in one of the club's five grand final losses since 1963.

But Johnson made it clear on the podium that he was not the subject of the story. "I'd like to thank our supporters who bloody deserve this — this one's for you," he said.

Coach Mark Thompson, who 14 years ago captained Essendon to a premiership, also spared his final thought for the club's long-suffering fans: "Thank you for hanging around and supporting the Cats and being so patient."

Of the team that had spent much of the past four months in a winning trance that became almost zen-like over the past seven days, Thompson's message was simple but moving: "Thank you to all the players who represented our club today. You are now premiership players. Well done."

Three years ago Mark Williams famously mocked a choke with his tie after his club won its first AFL premiership. Ever the showman, Williams had talked the talk all week, verbally challenging the Cats to choke for real.

It proved a forlorn hope as Williams' team failed to walk the walk. It had risen out of nowhere to reach yesterday's game, but it must be said Port failed dismally.

This time last week captain Warren Tredrea was bowing to his fans. Yesterday he was forced to publicly apologise to the football community for his side's dreadful performance. Tredrea kicked one-third of Port's goals, but had next to no impact on the game, and played his part in what history will remember as one of the more woeful forward-line performances in grand final history.

Williams commented after the Cats' five-point preliminary final thriller that the Geelong fans were getting ready to "tear down the walls of the place".

Instead they knocked down the fence of the MCG. Literally. As the Cats were running their lap of honour, supporters behind the Punt Road goal crammed behind the fence and pushed through it.

But for those who cared more about Victoria's pride than the spectacle itself, yesterday was a celebration. The cup was delivered, in a superb piece of showmanship, by the last Victorian team captain to hold it aloft, James Hird, who handed it to an airborne silver-clad acrobat suspended from a helium balloon. She in turn flew it down to AFL chairman Mike Fitzpatrick.

Some three hours later Geelong's last premiership captain, Fred Wooller, handed the trophy to Tom Harley, the 29-year-old appointed captain of the Cats at the start of the season, following a lengthy and controversial review into the club's failure of 2006.

Harley completed his brief speech by yelling: "We are Geelong." It was a simple line but told a complicated story.

The story of the national competition's only team in a regional town that had been debt-ridden and under-resourced until resurrected by the Frank Costa-Brian Cook administration that took over nine years ago.

Cameron Mooney was another who was taken to task by his teammates over the summer and told to show more leadership and discipline after being suspended four times last season. He got the message.

When Mooney kicked the third of his five goals in the dying moments of the third quarter he delivered the Cats another record — the biggest three-quarter time lead (90 points) in grand final history. In defeating Port Adelaide by 119 points, one behind shy of a 20-goal victory, the Cats also became the first team in AFL history to win two finals in one season by more than 100 points.

As it turned out, Geelong probably won the 2007 grand final eight nights ago in front of a bigger crowd and a vastly superior opposition.

To think it came so close to losing to Collingwood. And the team that produced nine all-Australians, the Brownlow medallist, the Rising Star, the McLelland Trophy and the VFL premiership chose the MCG on the last Saturday in September to complete its victory tour. In a canter.