Isaac Smith has always been a good celebrator, and when his moment came on Saturday, he didn't miss it. Not so his father Wayne, who had his head in his hands in the Ponsford Stand behind the city-end goals, too nervous to watch.
This was true to father-son form. On preliminary final day in 1999, as their beloved Carlton fought out an epic against Essendon, Wayne Smith went missing. ''I went and chopped wood, went for a five-k run, I couldn't cope,'' he says.
Isaac Smith celebrates his goal in Saturday's grand final.Credit: Justin McManus
He needn't have despaired. Eleven-year-old Isaac stayed glued to the television and saw the Blues get home, and when Wayne did the same, they danced a waltz through the streets of Temora, in the Riverina of NSW.
There was no room for a jig in the cheek-by-jowl joy-fest that was the Hawthorn rooms on Saturday night, but Wayne, wife Chris and their daughters, Lauren, Beth and Molly, rejoiced not only at what their boy had made of himself, but how spectacularly he took his chance when it came. The opposition will long lament four shots at goal from inside 30 metres that all sailed out on the full. Isaac Smith will be remembered for landing one from 60 when the Hawks were seriously under fire.
''It was from 90 metres out, I think,'' Smith said, throwing his head back and laughing. ''I just knew I could make the distance.''
A lead that had been a comfortable four goals had been cut to 10 points at the last change, and four minutes had elapsed when Brad Sewell found Smith on the 50-metre arc in front of the members. In one respect his confidence was up - the 24-year-old had already had four touches for the quarter. But then there was the memory of his only other shot at goal, a stuttering misfire from half the distance in the opening term.
''Sometimes you've just gotta go back and take the responsibility," Smith said. ''I did that and I hit it sweet. I knew straight away, as soon as it came off the boot, I put a bit of mail on the top.''
On a day when goalkicking was a swirling, maddening brute of a task inside the great bowl of the MCG, Smith was so sure of success he didn't even watch the ball find its target.
He was off, all aeroplane arms, primal scream and popping eyes. Shaun Burgoyne copped a passing high five, Sam Mitchell a fleeting embrace, and by the time he reached Ben Stratton in the middle of the ground, Smith had essayed a high-stepping, backwards-running, double-cobra arms celebration that knocked that long-ago Temora waltz into a cocked hat.
''I was pretty pumped. You just get a hit of adrenalin. These are days you dream of - I never thought I'd play in an AFL grand final, it's pretty surreal. I knew if I hit one today I was gunna go off. Yeah, I gave it a bit.''
He had every right. Five years ago, Smith was playing in the Redan reserves in the Ballarat Football League, having packed his bags and moved from Cootamundra with a football mission that amounted to getting a sports degree at the local university and seeing if that could lead to a career in the game he loved, albeit an off-field one.
Sue Brown, mother of footballing twins Nathan and Mitch, was the course co-ordinator, and they had some robust discourse as Smith would turn up every Monday wearing his Carlton jumper, no matter how the Blues had fared at the weekend.
Chris Keogh reckons her son ''was probably quite glad to get away from all the women in his life'', and while Molly says Smith's confidence has developed with age, his mum acknowledges his maturity in taking a big step into a foreign place.
It soon revealed itself to be the right move. ''I remember one comment, he rang up and said, 'Mum, it's unbelievable, they all speak the same language down here!' '' Chris says.
Smith praises his parents for raising their children to be independent of thought and action; moving towns, from Young to Temora to Cootamundra in Isaac's case, helped forge a get-on-with-it mentality. ''It was a no-brainer moving away from home and starting my own life. I'm still very close to mum and dad, but there's a point in life where you've got to move on and create your own life. I'm doing that.''
Still, the switch in his football fortunes - and ambition - was unforeseeable. Wayne Smith had coached his son and Luke Breust in the Temora juniors, and Isaac had played with Wagga and Albury before hurting his back and not playing much at all. Once in Ballarat he got involved almost as a way of meeting people, but was soon in the Redan seniors.
Lauren says they didn't realise their brother was any good, but when he played in a Redan premiership, a cousin declared he would play AFL one day. ''We said, 'No worries, whatever,' '' Lauren laughs. ''When Isaac won the VFL grand final he said, 'Ballarat league, VFL, next stop AFL.' We all had a joke, thinking it was a bit of a laugh.''
He finished the 2010 season playing the last six games for North Ballarat and winning a VFL flag, and in coach Gerard Fitzgerald encountered a man whose influence was huge despite their fleeting time together. ''A ripper, one of the best blokes I've ever met,'' Smith says. ''He gave me a bit of advice: never mistake a good bloke for a good person - I've carried that with me. Fitzy's a calm head in any situation, just a great person to know.''
Last year's experience - ''a shocking feeling, that's why it means so much'' - moulded him too. His father is a Catholic school principal, thus the regular moves, his mother a palliative care nurse. Wayne says Isaac has always been a balanced person, and even in miserable defeat he featured in a moment that lifted the mood.
''We were in here, there was dead silence, we didn't know how to react,'' Wayne Smith says. ''When they came out, Clinton Young's brother, who's got Down syndrome, yelled out, 'I love you Isaac!', and ran across and gave him a hug. It reminded them that it's only a game after all.''
On Saturday, Smith found himself in the middle of another moment that shows how a sporting path is never set in stone. Awaiting the presentations out on the ground, he stood alongside Mitchell and Jonathan Simpkin, and couldn't believe what had become of them. ''I said, 'Look at us - we're a bunch of rejects, and we've got an AFL premiership!' ''
His father is proud that he shakes every opposition hand after every game, win or lose. The women in his family are chuffed that their cousin was right.
Isaac Smith is simply over the moon that he's been given the belief to back himself.
''There's many blokes who've played elite sport and failed on the big stage,'' he says of the greatest goal of his life. ''Not saying I was the best player out there, but sometimes you've just gotta take responsibility.''