Grand Finals full of "What if" moments

Hawthorn Hawks ... Defeat in the grand final was a sad end to the Hawks' season as bad kicking for goal allowed Sydney to spring the upset. The club has vowed to bounce back in 2013. Source: News Limited

"HERE it is", roared Paul Roos as he held aloft the premiership cup.

"That's what I'm talking about", said Shane Crawford, on the same day his coach Alastair Clarkson admitted the 2008 premiership was won three years earlier than expected.

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Grand Final week is for "What If" moments about the effect of a premiership for players, coach and club.

Yet this year's Grand Final also has some alternate what ifs that just must be considered too.

What if the Hawks again capitulate on the big stage as they did so heartbreakingly last September?

What if Ross Lyon fails for the fourth time at the big dance, saddling him with an unwanted and unfair legacy of coming up short at the Big Dance?

Fremantle is a premiership contender under coach Ross Lyon. Source: Getty Images

And what if the Hawks lose and then Buddy still leaves them, unprepared to saddle up again to consider unfinished business at Hawthorn?

All of them valid if blunt questions.

The prevailing wisdom is still that Franklin hasn't made up his mind, or at least has told only his closest confidantes if he has.

GWS aren't doing the smug Lets-Wait-And-See thing, confident they have their man.

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They genuinely don't know which way he will go.

But they are desperately hoping Buddy wins on Saturday to make his decision easier.

Much easier to depart having given your club two premierships and nine years of service.

Yet Gary Ablett left Geelong just weeks after a horror year — and a disastrous preliminary finals loss to Collingwood in which he was magnificent.

The what if no one wants to consider is what if Franklin struggles to have an impact in a loss to Fremantle, then is gone just six days later.

What would that do to the love the Hawthorn faithful have for Buddy?

And what if Hawthorn falls short as they have done with such regular monotony since 2008?

Dynasties aren't easy to come by — ask 2010 premiers Collingwood — but this was a side set for a decade of dominance.

Instead they have gone: missed finals, terrible finals loss to Fremantle, preliminary final heartbreak, grand final heartbreak.

So if they cannot conquer Fremantle, do they just keep banging their head against a wall or make significant changes to their list and tactics?

Does Clarkson accept Franklin is gone and use the cap space and picks to replenish the midfield with free agent Dale Thomas and Saint Leigh Montagna as well as Brisbane's Billy Longer.

Clarkson, contracted for next year, has spoken of unfinished business in rebuffing interested from Melbourne in recent seasons.

West Coast would likely throw him a five-year deal and tell him to name his own price, but surely he would saddle up for Hawthorn again in 2014.

And of Ross Lyon, who has been denied by a Matt Scarlett toe-poke, an errant bounce past Stephen Milne and then a hungry Collingwood outfit in a premiership replay?

He is too hellbent on success, and too accomplished and too young at just 46 not to achieve his premiership dream some day.

But he would know the planets have aligned.

How many more times will he have a fit and in-form trio of Matthew Pavlich, Aaron Sandilands and Luke McPharlin plus the frenetic attack on the ball and man which has proved elusive even for past masters like Collingwood?

Both of these coaching titans deserve premiership success, but one will go away searching for answers.

Grand Finals are about achieving greatness with success, but they are also about picking up the pieces if the afternoon goes pear-shaped.

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