Just after 7:00 pm on Saturday August 27 last year, Richmond limped off the Sydney Cricket Ground having suffered a 113-point humiliation at the hands of the minor premiers, the Sydney Swans.

On a shocking night for the Tigers, they kicked just seven goals while the Swans racked up 25 goals with embarrassing ease. The defeat was the culmination of a woeful season which saw Richmond finish 13th with eight wins, throwing the future of coach Damien Hardwick into massive doubt.

Earlier that year the former Hawthorn assistant coach signed a two-year contract extension which was to expire at the end of the 2018 season. But as each loss passed by, the board started to lose their patience as the Tigers, who endured a hat-trick of elimination final defeats between 2013 and 2015 inclusive, uncontrollably spiralled down the ladder.

After a round three defeat to the Adelaide Crows at Etihad Stadium, Hardwick admitted that the club had to “take a little half-step back to go two steps forward”.

In fact, some could even point to the heartbreaking one-point loss to Collingwood at the MCG the previous week as being the sign of things to come for the club in 2016.

Nine days after their meek capitulation in the Harbour City, a board review was conducted, after which Hardwick was given a vote of confidence to stay on at the club.

In the off-season that followed, the club offloaded much-maligned forward Tyrone Vickery, as well as club veteran Brett Deledio, while they brought in Josh Caddy, Dion Prestia and Toby Nankervis from other clubs.

Given the dismal season they had endured, nothing much was expected from the Tigers in 2017, and the low expectations played a key factor in the club starting the season with five straight wins.

That raised excitement among the yellow-and-black faithful until their team copped a huge reality check in round six, thrashed by the Adelaide Crows by 76 points at the Oval.

They then endured a hat-trick of heartbreaking defeats by a combined total of just ten points, first by five points to the Western Bulldogs, and then by two to Fremantle at the MCG and three to the GWS Giants in Sydney.

Those defeats would ultimately cost them their first minor premiership since 1982, but as we found out later, it would not matter an inch.

They would right the ship by defeating Essendon in the annual Dreamtime at the G match, with Dustin Martin winning the Yiooken Medal for the second consecutive year.

Then, after their round 12 bye, they blew a six-goal lead to lose to the Sydney Swans by nine points at the MCG, making this their fourth (and last) defeat by a single-figure margin in 2017.

Another reality check followed in Maddie’s Match, where they lost to St Kilda by 67 points at Etihad Stadium. It proved to be the major turning point in their season, as they would lose just once more for the remainder of the year.

That was against the Geelong Cats at Simonds Stadium in round 21, a fixture made possible by the Tigers’ dismal 2016 season which cost the club both commercially and financially this year.

The match attracted over 32,000 fans – a figure that could so easily have been more than doubled had that match been played at the MCG.

When the two teams met again in the qualifying final at the ground a month later, they attracted nearly triple of what they did for that round 21 match at Kardinia Park, drawing just over 95,000 fans.

While it was a Cats home game as they had finished higher on the ladder, the Tiger Army easily outnumbered their Cats counterparts, and it told as Damien Hardwick’s men won their first finals match since 2001, defeating the Cats by 51 points after dominating the final quarter.

This sent the yellow-and-black through to their first preliminary final since that same year, where they then defeated the GWS Giants by 36 points to advance to their first grand final since 1982.

It was then the biggest week of the tens of thousands of Tigers supporters’ lives started.

Dustin Martin started as the shortest-priced of favourites to win the Brownlow Medal, which he did by accruing a record 36 votes – one more than what Patrick Dangerfield polled when he won it last year.

As they did last year for the Western Bulldogs, all of Victoria got behind the Tigers as they sought to end a 37-year premiership drought – the longest in the club’s history.

However, they had one more hurdle to overcome in the Adelaide Crows, who, much like the Sydney Swans last year, entered the season’s biggest match having been the best-performing team of the regular season by a country mile.

Don Pyke’s men had entered their first grand final since 1998 on the back of dominant wins over the GWS Giants and Geelong Cats by a combined total of nearly 100 points.

This made them the bookies’ favourites to take out the flag, and all appeared on track when they led by 11 points at quarter-time with Rory Sloane and Hugh Greenwood both kicking goals late in the opening quarter to establish this advantage.

However, the Tigers would take control of the contest, kicking four goals to nothing in the second quarter to take a nine-point lead into the half-time break, but from that point it remained anyone’s to win.

If Crows fans were desperately seeking any optimism, it’s that both of their grand final wins in 1997 and 1998 came when they trailed their opposition at half-time (St Kilda and North Melbourne, respectively).

However, any hopes of a Crow comeback were all but extinguished when the Tigers kicked five goals to one in the premiership quarter, by the end of which they had established a 34-point lead.

Even with one quarter left in the year to play, the yellow-and-black army was already daring to dream, and it ultimately became reality with another five-goal quarter, giving them a total team score of 16.12 (108).

More impressively, they restricted the Crows, the league’s highest-scoring team for the second year in a row, to just 8.12 (60) – making it the lowest score in any match for Don Pyke’s men in 2017.

It marked a bitterly disappointing end to the season for the men from West Lakes, which had been through enough heartbreak already in the past few years with the departure of key players, the Kurt Tippett salary cap saga and the deaths of much-loved coaches Dean Bailey and Phil Walsh.

They may have been the best team for most of the year, but as other teams in the past few years have found out, it all amounts to nothing if you cannot perform in the match that matters the most.

The same fate the Crows suffered befell the Geelong Cats in 2008, St Kilda in 2009, Collingwood in 2011, Hawthorn in 2012, and the Sydney Swans twice, in 2012 and 2014.

Those clubs finished at the top of the ladder in their respective years, but couldn’t deliver the goods in the biggest match of the year (note I did not consider Fremantle because they did not reach the grand final in 2015).

It must be noted, though, that the Cats bounced back to capture the flag in 2009, while the Pies had claimed the 2010 flag prior to finishing on top of the ladder the following season.

In the Crows’ and Swans’ cases, they both faced crowds that were against them as their opponents, Richmond and the Western Bulldogs, successfully broke long premiership droughts of their own (35 and 62 years respectively).

It will now remain to be seen what lessons Don Pyke’s men will learn from their grand final defeat, which adds to a growing list of finals failures the club has endured since they won their last flag in 1998.

However, it marks the first time that they have lost an AFL grand final after two previously successful attempts, while they also blew the chance to become the first club to have both their men’s and women’s sides win premierships in the same year (the women having won the inaugural AFLW flag in March).

Back on topic now, and the Tigers’ premiership win completed the largest single-season turnaround in recent history, claiming the flag only 13 months after finishing 13th with just eight wins.

Many called for Damien Hardwick’s dismissal in the wake of their dramatic drop down the ladder, but the premiership victory has vindicated the board’s decision to retain him going into this season.

Ironically, it eclipsed the Crows’ rise from 12th in 1996 (they won their first four games that season, but merely doubled it by season’s end) to premiers in 1997; further, they successfully retained the flag in 1998.

Dustin Martin created more history by becoming the first man to claim the Brownlow-Norm Smith Medal double, while he also became the first man since Gary Ablett Jr in 2009 to win the Brownlow and then go on to feature in a premiership-winning side in the same week.

It completed the most dominant season by an individual in recent AFL history, and one would think that the 26-year-old will also clean up at Richmond’s best-and-fairest awards later this month.

Jack Riewoldt also achieved what his newly-retired cousin Nick couldn’t, while Jacob Townsend became the second ex-Giant (after Tom Boyd last year) to feature in a premiership-winning side; further, he was part of the GWS Giants’ inaugural side that lost its first AFL game to the Sydney Swans in 2012.

Former teammates at the Gold Coast Suns, Dion Prestia and Josh Caddy, also claimed their first premiership medals, with the former having been a part of the side that lost its first AFL game against Carlton by 119 points in 2011.

Toby Nankervis also tasted the ultimate success in his first season as a Tiger, twelve months after being listed as an emergency for the Sydney Swans as they opted to go for Sam Naismith in the ruck.

And over 12 months after being sacked as Brisbane Lions head coach, Justin Leppitsch enjoyed a triumphant return to Tigerland, having served as an assistant coach under Damien Hardwick for four years prior to his ill-fated three-year coaching stint at the Gabba between 2014 and 2016.

Those are just some of the stories to come out of Richmond’s 11th premiership, but first since 1980, and it has already brought up an interesting talking point for the start of the next season.

With the traditional season-opening match between the Tigers and Blues set to be retained for 2018, next season will mark the first time since 2001 in which the reigning premier will play in the first match of the new season.

Given it is the Tigers’ turn to host next year’s season opener, it would also seem appropriate for the club to use the occasion to unfurl the premiership flag before the first bounce.

And because it will be Port Adelaide’s turn to play at home in round one, it would clear the decks for the Adelaide Crows to potentially host the grand final rematch at the Oval as early as round two, likely to be either on a Thursday or Saturday night (round two next year is the Easter round).

To finish off, congratulations to the Richmond Football Club for winning their 11th premiership, and especially to Damien Hardwick and Trent Cotchin for masterminding the greatest season turnaround in recent history.

Commiserations to the Adelaide Crows, who had been the team to beat this season by a country mile but couldn’t deliver in the match that mattered the most.

And that’s all she wrote for the 2017 season, which will go down as one of the craziest and most intriguing seasons ever. The countdown has now begun in earnest to the 2018 season, which will start with the Tigers likely to kick off their premiership defence against Carlton at the MCG on Thursday, March 22.