A footy fan needs answers at a time like this. Confronted by such a stunning result, they turn to statistics, soothsayers, even journalists, those ink-stained charlatans, hoping that someone might be able to explain the inexplicable.

Maybe I’m failing in my brief, but after consulting the tea-leaves, reading the stars and listening to ‘Delilah’ backwards, I find no narrative that explains what Hawthorn did to Sydney out on a sun-drenched MCG. In a two-horse race, Tom Jones vaulted the rail and almost beat Sydney into third.

We already know that grand finals are won by cool heads (like Jarrad McVeigh), by hard bodies (like Josh Kennedy’s), and by players with big-match experience (like Adam Goodes).

We also know that Sydney play finals-optimised football: they are well-drilled, they play for each other, and they have a galaxy of stars capable of making the difference in a tight contest.

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And yet Hawthorn’s all-star engine room did better than break even at the stoppages, offsetting Mike Pyke’s ruck dominance. In football’s most pressurised atmosphere, the Hawks’ use of the ball was exemplary. It was the Hawks’ stars that shone brightest, and the bodies being put on the line were generally clad in brown and gold.

Sydney have been far and away the best team of 2014, and in the only game that matters, Hawthorn utterly eclipsed them, making them look like wooden spooners.

What’s more, the Hawks made a lie of all the received wisdom around finals, playing a slick, high-risk game. It was tempting to wonder if in fact it was Sydney that perpetrated the deceit, fielding not the Bondi Billionaires but their home-brand knock-offs.

A game of football has an immense number of variable factors: 44 players, seven officials, two head coaches and an awkwardly-shaped ball. Anything can happen. Patterns weave and unweave themselves, colossal amounts of energy are expended in the pursuit of a leather ball, and one team wins.

Then comes the tricky bit: we consult footy’s rich glossary of terms, trying to explain why.

Why couldn’t Sydney’s midfielders capitalise on Mike Pyke’s dominance? Why did Sydney’s runners fail to find space? Who removed Lewis Jetta’s batteries? How were Sydney seemingly always a man short?

If the law of footballing entropy was going to break either of these teams, it was Hawthorn that looked more vulnerable: a good number of their best players – Luke Hodge, Sam Mitchell, Brian Lake, Shaun Burgoyne – are well onto the back nine of their careers, while Sydney’s best, with the exception of the departing Adam Goodes, are in their prime, or fast approaching it.

If any explanation were possible, it would come from the coach’s box, where Alastair Clarkson’s bespoke tactics rendered the formguide and footballing convention irrelevant.

Clarkson choked Sydney’s midfield and took their top-heavy forward line out of the game (with the exception of a stoic Lance Franklin).

He made the contest less about contests, and more about possession – a Hawthorn specialty.

Time and again, Hawthorn’s mobile defenders made calculated gambles, leaving their man to bury a Blood in the tackle, or to offer an outside option for a beleaguered teammate. It didn’t always work, and it made for one of the most open grand finals in years, but the ploy gave Hawthorn more men where it mattered, more often.

And once this Hawk side get the ball in their hand, they don’t give it back.

Clarkson’s gambit, and John Longmire’s strange passivity, only half explain it, though.

To call Hawthorn’s hard-won flag an anomaly is unfair, but the grand final itself must surely go down as one of the strangest, flattest, most anodyne contests in living memory.

The history books will remember the Hawks as the dominant side of our era, but even they won’t be able to explain exactly what the hell happened out there.