“Intense, frenetic and so incredibly tight. It was like we were all forced to hold our breath for two hours.”

“What. A. Game.”

In his own words, that is how Patrick Dangerfield will remember last Friday night’s qualifying final between old foes Geelong and Hawthorn.

A match which read like a Hollywood script unsurprisingly came down to a single kick, as Hawk Isaac Smith lined up for a shot on goal following the final siren.

The equation was simple. A goal and Hawthorn give themselves the best chance possible to secure a history-making fourth consecutive premiership.

A miss and Geelong are through to a home preliminary final with the chance to create history of their own in a new era for the club.

He missed.

“It’s the best feeling I’ve had after any game,” Dangerfield wrote the morning after in his Herald Sun column.

“I tried to get hold of Harry Taylor, but he was charging around the MCG like a madman. My eyes then locked on to Tom Lonergan – and two the blokes looking for someone to hold had found each other.”

“I laugh now because I can’t even remember what we were saying. We were just going berserk and screaming in each other’s face.”

“That blur of pandemonium after Isaac Smith’s post-siren behind secured our path to a preliminary final will stay with me forever.”

So much can change so quickly in football. Some thirty to sixty seconds earlier, as the siren sounded, there was nothing to suggest Dangerfield and his teammates would feel anything but torment after two hours of combat.

It was not until the ball had left Smith’s boot and began its trajectory towards infamy did those dark feelings go with it.

“When Smith marked it I actually thought there was a minute and half left, but then the siren sounded and my heart sank,” Dangerfield wrote.

“Standing at the top of the 50m line, I was empty. You couldn’t hear anything. I went blank.”

“I didn’t want to stand behind him for the shot. I didn’t even really want to watch it. I thought it came slightly off the in-step, but it wasn’t until I saw our boys going troppo that I realised we’d got them.”

By now, the football world is well acclimatised to the rivalry that is Geelong and Hawthorn.

Supporters of both clubs and neutrals alike revel in the game’s most anticipated match up; two teams with genuine dislike for one another yet mutual respect, coming together like two bulls in a pen only big enough for one.

The game’s premier midfielder now knows this first hand.

“After the game something else hit me. I had watched and felt the Geelong-Hawthorn rivalry from afar, but it wasn’t until this incredible game that it dawned on me exactly what it is,” Dangerfield wrote.

“Looking back to Round 1 and my Cats debut, I didn’t really feel it then. I tell you what, I feel every bit of it now.”

“It was just amazing to really feel the rivalry and it’s taken a season to understand what it all is.”

The Cats now watch on this week as their preliminary final opponent is decided.

Sydney will host Adelaide at the SCG with the winner left to prevent Dangerfield and the Cats booking their place in this year’s AFL grand final.

“Bring on the next chapter,” Dangerfield said.