Defence v offence. But Ross Lyon's side did not create enough genuine scoring opportunities to leave itself any margin for error. It has got by this season with an impressive conversion rate, with its average goals-per-inside-50 percentage of 28.6 the third-best in the AFL. But when the goal-front clangers came on Saturday and that percentage dropped to just 18, it had little room for manoeuvre. It was Hawthorn, the highest-scoring team of 2013 and also the best at converting inside-50s, that prevailed, significantly the only one of the two teams fitting what are becoming pretty reliable parameters of a premiership team profile. Hawthorn became the 11th of the past 12 premiers to rank no lower than fifth for both points conceded and points scored. Sydney of 2005, which ranked just 14th for attack, was the only side since 2001 to defy that convention. And were it not for Leo Barry's famous match-saving mark, the number could well be an even dozen.

Even Sydney of the mid-noughties eventually got the message - first under Paul Roos and then John Longmire - that you need to kick goals as well as prevent them. The Swans' 2012 flag team ranked first for defence but a vastly improved fifth for attack. As good a coach as Lyon is, perhaps theirs is an example he could study a little more closely. His St Kilda of 2009 certainly fitted the mould, ranked first for defence and fourth for offence, but the Saints who went within a Matthew Scarlett toe-poke of a premiership are the only one of Lyon's teams in seven years as an AFL coach to rank higher than eighth for attack. In the four grand finals he's now coached, his teams have scored nine, 10, seven and eight goals. When the Fremantle coach addressed the media after the game and noted that his Hawthorn counterpart Alastair Clarkson's observation 12 months previously that all his team needed in order to go one better were some "modifications", surely one involving scoreboard pressure was on his mind. That has to mean more key-position support for skipper Matthew Pavlich, the only genuine tall target in Freo's forward structure in the grand final, and consequently, one upon whom not only Hawk defender Brian Lake but Josh Gibson were able to focus most of their attentions. Smaller targets require more precise and clinical delivery, not a regular occurrence in the heat of a grand final, and even tougher when the likes of Chris Mayne, Hayden Ballantyne and Michael Walters are having the ordinary afternoons they had on Saturday.

The Dockers could do some serious shopping on the tall forward front come trade and draft time, but even as it is have promising youngster Matt Taberner in the wings and a still-able veteran in Kepler Bradley; one still some way off, the other near the end, but both at least providing some sort of escape route via the get-out kick when the heat is applied further afield. Hawthorn is a good example on that score. The Hawks have been far more prepared to kick to a contest this season than last, their ranking for contested marks climbing from absolute last to seventh, and marks inside-50 another statistic in which they led the AFL in 2013. Those who bemoan the way Lyon's Fremantle plays its football (and I'm not one of them) will feel vindicated in this grand final's aftermath. As a spectacle, it was easily one of the poorest we've seen for a long time, with fewer genuine highlights than just about any in recent memory. Loading That will have been the least of Lyon's concerns over the past couple of days, of course.

As he put it at the post-game press conference: "We are here to win premierships." Ironically, though, finding a better balance between defence and attack next year could see him and his team not only satisfy that aim, but the grumbles of the purists as well.