VICTORIA University’s Footscray Park campus boasts a $68 million sport and exercise science facility, but its contribution to the Western Bulldogs’ 2016 premiership will forever be priceless.

It was here, in this building overlooking Flemington Racecourse, that Jack Macrae and Tom Liberatore won their improbable late-season race to regain fitness.

Both went down against Geelong in Round 19 - another “not again” moment in a season pot-holed by injuries. Macrae had a hamstring tendon injury and Liberatore needed surgery on a serious ankle syndesmosis injury.

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But while the Bulldogs were fighting a losing battle to secure a top-four spot, the two key midfielders were winning theirs on bicycles inside VU’s cutting edge “altitude hotel” and “heat chamber”.

They missed a month.

Meanwhile, stand-in captain Easton Wood needed weekly painkilling injections on an ankle injury suffered in Round 22 to make sure he didn’t follow the same path. Jake Stringer was given the green light to return after a two-week VFL stint that didn’t exactly wow onlookers.

media_camera Tom Liberatore injured his ankle in Round 19. Picture: Wayne Ludbey media_camera Easton Wood injured his ankle in Round 22.

Jordan Roughead recovered after missing Round 23 with a calf complaint.

All five were back for a cut-throat final against West Coast on the other side of the country.

An advance party of seven players - Liam Picken, Dale Morris, Matthew Boyd, Matt Suckling, Roughead, Wood and Stringer - flew to Perth on Tuesday, September 6.

Their teammates followed the next day, joining them at the Novotel Langley and a light run at the WACA Ground — a new preparation in a city the Bulldogs didn’t have fond memories of.

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There may have been an unprecedented pre-finals bye, but the Dogs were heading back to Perth for the second time in 12 days and with an ugly 20-point Round 23 loss to the 16th-placed Dockers still fresh in the minds.

Yet on a sunny, picture-perfect Thursday afternoon in the west, the strongest Western Bulldogs side since the opening month of the season made the 20-minute bus trip to Subiaco Oval.

No one knew it at the time, but the most magical finals campaign in football history was about to unfold.

AFL Premiers 2016 AFL Premiers 2016

ELIMINATION FINAL v WEST COAST

THE Bulldogs had never won an interstate final and had not saluted at Subiaco since 2010.

West Coast had won nine of its previous 10 matches, including victories over GWS, Hawthorn and Adelaide.

Yet when coach Luke Beveridge looked into his players’ eyes he saw something that said “there was a bit left in us”.

Faced with an Eagles press that had suffocated the best sides in the competition at Subiaco, the Dogs’ ball use was clean, brave and direct — right up the middle of the longest AFL ground in the country.

Expecting slow, long, down-the-line kicks, the Eagles were instead met by a frenzied Bulldog offence that threw caution to the wind.

media_camera Liam Picken was inspired in the Bulldogs elimination final win over West Coast.

Beveridge had gambled and come up with a royal flush.

The swarm was on. The Dogs exchanged handballs in the back 50m and then went fast right through the heart of Subiaco Oval to feast on a glut of over-the-back goals via 11 different goalkickers.

Liam Picken set the tone with a huge first quarter that featured goals, contested marks, game-breaking possessions and his teammates quickly followed the lead. Caleb Daniel and Luke Dahlhaus were two-way balls of energy and Tory Dickson caught fire.

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The Dogs’ run of seven consecutive first-half goals knocked the stuffing out of the Eagles. The “House of Pain” was hurting and eerily quiet. The press box, full of West Australian media, was just as mute. This wasn’t part of the script.

By the final siren, it was a 47-point belting.

President Peter Gordon punched the air on the bench and Beveridge couldn’t hide his smile in the coach’s box.

media_camera Luke Dahlhaus fires off a handball in the elimination final win.

Liberatore jumped on Stringer’s back as the players went into a changeroom low on numbers but big on jubilation.

Down the corridor, West Coast coach Adam Simpson was frank.

“We couldn’t handle it,” he said.

Luke Beveridge said: “We didn’t in our wildest dreams think we were going to play that well.”

The footy world had its heart warmed, but Beveridge’s boys were just getting started.

media_camera Luke Shuey walks off as the Bulldogs celebrate. Picture: Daniel Wilkins

SEMI-FINAL v HAWTHORN

BACK in Footscray, belief was snowballing. Daniel declared “there is no ceiling”, while Matthew Boyd spoke of “spirit” and “playing for each other”.

That comraderie was proved on Thursday with a hijacked team meeting only 36 hours out from the Dogs’ biggest game of the year, to date — the semi-final against Hawthorn.

Stringer told the team that Stewart Crameri was absent despite his much-anticipated return to the club following a 12-month ASADA ban. But they had prepared a video, Stringer said, which they might as well play.

Someone flicked the lights and the players giggled as they watched Crameri’s head superimposed on a wrestler’s body. But when Crameri entered the room seconds later — arms raised to thumping WWE music — hilarity ensued.

Yet the warm and fuzzy stuff was doing nothing to convince the neutrals they’d go any further. Stopping Hawthorn — winner of the last three premierships — and its kicking game on the expanses of the MCG was deemed a step too far.

media_camera Marcus Bontempelli and Lachie Hunter celebrate a goal against Hawthorn.

The Dogs had played only twice on the MCG this season, the most recent way back in Round 10.

Again, the reality bus was supposed to run the Dogs over. Instead, the reality bus was stopped and then put up on blocks.

The Dogs started with intensity, but like the Eagles game, without polish. The Hawks jumped to a 23-point lead half way through the second quarter, having kicked five of their first six goals directly from Bulldogs turnovers.

But like they had done all season, the Dogs fought. Picken was again the one to light a fire underneath his teammates and his inspirational second term, highlighted by a mark in the face of oncoming traffic that saw him poleaxed, urged the Dogs to engineer eight of the last nine scoring shots of the first half to roar back into the game.

media_camera Jake Stringer caught fire in the third quarter of the semi-final against Hawthorn.

Then came the Dogs’ withering six-goal third quarter burst that rocked the Hawks to their core. Dominating contested ball and clearances, the Bulldogs’ pressure that crippled West Coast had strangled the best kicking side the game had seen.

In the frenzy, Marcus Bontempelli was a picture of poise and Macrae has 39 touches at 82 per cent efficiency. More than 87,000 had been enthralled by the battle. It was the biggest crowd to ever witness a Bulldogs victory — for now.

“We did hold our nerve ... it gets back to that belief in what they know that they can do,” Beveridge said.

“There’s a big carrot right in front of us.”

The fairytale now had wings.

media_camera Dale Morris celebrates on the final siren as Luke Hodge and Sam Mitchell watch on.

PRELIMINARY FINAL v GREATER WESTERN SYDNEY

IT was the team given everything against the team given nothing.

The AFL-created, spoonfed Greater Western Sydney in its $65 million redeveloped stadium against the Western Bulldogs — a club with one flag in 91 years, which nearly merged and scrounged each year just to stay in the black.

Then again, the Bulldogs were staying a short walk from Spotless Stadium at the five-star Pullman Hotel. How times had changed.

Such was the size of the Dogs’ travelling band of red, white and blue believers that the Giants were booed on to their own ground. Stunned, GWS coach Leon Cameron approached AFL football operations boss Mark Evans to express his disbelief.

What followed the opening bounce was pure drama.

media_camera Clay Smith was on fire in the first half of the preliminary final.

The Dogs’ tortured run of seven consecutive preliminary final defeats was ended by two hours of football that will stay with this club forever.

The Dogs were down by 11 points late in the third term and 14 in the fourth, but again refused to wilt as the Giants’ marking power and superior scoring arsenal threatened to inflict more prelim heartbreak.

Heroes were everywhere.

Clay Smith, playing for a friend who’d died in a car crash a week earlier, kicked four first-half goals. Dickson (four goals) was inspirational opposed to Heath Shaw, Wood was impassible and Dahlhaus was again in everything.

Then there was Tom Boyd, who dug as deep as anyone when he was forced to ruck for nearly three quarters after Jordan Roughead copped a ball to the face from close-range that caused bleeding in his right eye.

media_camera Jordan Roughead was forced off after copping a football to the eye.

The tension was all too much for Gordon, who had taken to listening to the Saving Private Ryan soundtrack by the Boston Symphony Orchestra in an attempt to settle his nerves.

But by the end he could not watch and was hiding away in the players’ race.

Someone had to tell him Stringer had squared the ball to Dickson to ice the game.

Behind glass up in the stands, Luke Darcy was more fan than commentator, but who could blame him?

“I’ve been wanting to say this for as long as I can remember, ‘The Bulldogs are into a Grand Final!’” he yelled.

media_camera Marcus Bontempelli, Bob Murphy and Peter Gordon celebrate the preliminary final win. Picture: Phil Hillyard

The tears of joy flow from Bob Murphy to David Smorgon. So overjoyed were the players that Liberatore rolled his ankle while celebrating on the ground.

It was an injury that stopped him, along with Roughead, training early in Grand Final week.

The scenes in the Dogs’ rooms were just as frantic as the game.

Players had sung the song, ushered family and friends out, had a meeting, showered (most of them) and were on the bus, all within 30 minutes of the final siren.

An “ecstatic” Beveridge was still telling the media that it had been an “amazing day for our football club” when the players were taking their seats on the bus. They drove to the airport and literally walked straight on to the plane bound for Melbourne.

Football’s greatest fairytale had entered football’s biggest week. There was no time to waste.

media_camera Ryan Griffen and Shane Mumford dejected as Toby McLean and Tom Boyd celebrate. Picture: Phil Hillyard

GRAND FINAL v SYDNEY

THE players received the same old advice — enjoy the week — but such was their relaxed state at Monday’s open media session it was obvious they would not be easily overwhelmed.

By the time 10,000 people poured into the Whitten Oval for Thursday’s open training session they had perfected the art of the fashionably late entrance.

But the fans don’t mind — not when they’d been waiting 55 years to see their side return to the Grand Final.

The atmosphere was supercharged.

Even assistant coach Joel Corey, a three-time Geelong premiership player who played in the Cats’ drought-breaking 2007 flag, said he’d never seen anything like it.

media_camera Tom Liberatore and Josh Kennedy go toe-to-toe. Picture: Alex Coppel

When Beveridge saw the sea of people lining Wellington Parade at Friday’s Grand Final parade, his mind flashed back to the Southern Cross Hotel and The Beatles’ trip to Melbourne in 1964.

At the last press conference, the coach who had picked a club off its knees was excited, but confident.

“We feel we’ve come to the last game of the year still with a lot left,” Beveridge said.

The next day, in his final address to the players, he went with a musical theme in pursuit of that emotional hook.

Beveridge likened his side to a band and urged them to “use your instruments”.

media_camera Jason Johannisen won the Norm Smith Medal. Picture: Wayne Ludbey

The stirring speech reminded the Dogs anything was possible against the more fancied Swans if they combined their individual talents.

They did, almost erasing 62 years of pain with two hours of football ecstasy in a decider that shocked with its brutality and thrilled with its energy.

The Dogs absorbed everything Josh Kennedy and the battle-hardened Swans could throw at them in the first half — and then struck with an irresistible last quarter that had you believing in destiny.

Jason Johannisen’s combination of raw speed and sense of adventure earned him the Norm Smith Medal.

Picken yet again shaped the game with his move from a wing to the forward line and Boyd — the million-dollar kid with a million critics — spectacularly delivered when he was needed most.

media_camera Tom Boyd and Toby McLean celebrate his iconic goal. Picture: Wayne Ludbey media_camera Liam Picken flies high for a spectacular mark. Picture: Wayne Ludbey

Boyd’s massive third goal in the last term invoked such powerful emotion that commentator Brian Taylor dropped the F-bomb on radio.

“Boyd has kicked a goal from inside the centre square ... f---! I can’t believe that,” he screamed.

It was a victory to make the heart melt, completed by Beveridge giving teary injured captain Bob Murphy his medal on the dais.

And it was a victory that surely sits atop the best premierships in VFL/AFL history.

Seventh on the ladder, underdogs in four finals - two interstate - an injury list that never quit and all of it coming two years after the sudden departure of captain Ryan Griffen and coach Brendan McCartney that had left them in crisis.

The team from Melbourne’s west had become Australia’s team. It wasn’t just a premiership, it was a life-changer.

media_camera Bulldogs players and fans celebrate after the Grand Final siren. Picture: Toby Zerna

media_camera Luke Beveridge presents his premiership medal to Bob Murphy. Picture: Phil Hillyard

media_camera Bob Murphy and Easton Wood hoist the premiership cup as John Schultz and Luke Beveridge watch on. Picture: Wayne Ludbey

media_camera The premiership winning Western Bulldogs.