Every great grand final has its memorable moments, brilliant individual displays and a tense countdown to the final siren.

Controversy and comebacks add further spice.

The 1989 Victorian Football League decider between Hawthorn and Geelong had all of those ingredients and more.

But its defining quality was the sheer, unrivalled brutality of the contest on the biggest stage of all.

It started with Geelong hard man Mark Yeates charging off a wing to attack Hawthorn champion Dermott Brereton at the opening bounce and finished with Robert DiPierdomenico missing the Hawks’ celebrations because he was taken to hospital.

In between was two hours of unbridled football madness, complete with lashings of all-out attacking play and violent confrontation.

Yeates, who later described it as “open warfare”, executed a premeditated plan to charge Brereton.

It had been hatched on the preceding Thursday night with Cats coach Malcolm Blight but had its roots in an earlier incident when Brereton damaged one of Yeates’ testicles with his knee in an on-field clash.

“I was livid,” Yeates recalled in ‘The Final Story 1989’ documentary, released almost a quarter of a century later.

“Whether it was in the grand final or the next time we played Hawthorn, I was hell-bent on squaring up.”

Brereton, bones rattled by the hit, stayed on the field, vomited and kicked a team-lifting major as Hawthorn seized the early grand final ascendancy with eight first-quarter goals.

The scene was set.

Brereten had also suffered a split kidney and passed blood in the changeroom at halftime, but soldiered on.

Neville Bruns and Andrew Bews literally took the fight to DiPierdomenico, who was one of several Hawks flattened by Garry Hocking.

Gary Ablett Snr cannoned into the big ‘Dipper’ as he reached back into dangerous territory for a mark, the Geelong superstar breaking his opponent’s ribs.

Fuelled by adrenaline, DiPierdomenico played on and was reported for a high elbow, delivered in retaliation, that left Hocking spitting blood.

“I just wanted to kill him. I got him with an absolute ripper,” DiPierdomenico said.

John Platten was knocked out, Michael Tuck split the webbing on one of his hands and Gary Ayres tore a thigh.

Umpires be damned, the only person capable of bringing even a brief halt to the mayhem was a female streaker dressed in a Batman mask and cape.

Amid the chaos, Hawthorn led by at least six goals at every break but Ablett kept Geelong in the contest.

His leap above the ruckmen at a boundary throw-in and quickfire snapshot from the forward pocket will be replayed for many years to come.

The man dubbed ‘God’ by adoring Cats fans kicked nine goals to break Brereton’s post-war grand final record and claimed the Norm Smith Medal for his efforts in a losing side.

Three of Ablett’s majors came in the final stanza as Geelong piled on 8.5 to close to within one kick in the dying stages.

But Hawthorn held on to snare back-to-back flags for the first time in club history and a fourth premiership in a remarkable run of seven consecutive grand finals from 1983 to 1989.

DiPierdomenico was taken by ambulance to hospital, had a lung punctured and took several days to recover.

The last grand final under the old VFL moniker was the end of an era, in more ways than one, before the competition adopted the Australian Football league brand in 1990.

“It was the last of the seriously brutal games of football I’ve seen,” Geelong coach Malcolm Blight recalled years later.

Few would dare argue with Blight, an Australian Football Hall of Fame Legend, who endured more heartache as coach of the Cats in two more grand final defeats before moving on.