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Has there ever been an opening round of an AFL season with as many shocks and surprises as this one?
One in which every game that was played had something in it, big or small, that rendered all the talk before it inconsequential and everything to come in the future a mystery?
Everywhere you looked there was a story, for every team either a cause for concern or celebration or inquisition.
It started on Thursday night when Alex Rance's right knee jarred and buckled under his weight in a marking contest and continued right until the Sunday twilight, when a Ross Lyon-led Fremantle emerged from its summer cocoon as an unlikely attacking juggernaut.
In between, three of last year's top four teams suffered defeat. The fourth, Richmond, lost its most influential player for the season.
Some ordained risers fell deflatingly flat, and some predicted sliders looked randomly rejuvenised. So many of the kids were more than all right, and so much of the footy was brilliantly watchable — whether or not the new rules were responsible is probably in the eye of the beholder.
It was a tipster's nightmare but a footy lover's delight as the only preseason prediction that turned out to be true was that this season will be too tight to call with any conviction.
Let's go back to that first Thursday at the MCG. Richmond's win was relatively comfortable but ended in literal tears, with Rance's determination to keep on smiling not quite enough for some of his teammates. It's a massive injury, one that doesn't rule out the Tigers but one that will force an overhaul to a champion team, the results of which won't be known for months.
On the other side was a Carlton team left beaten but not disgraced, and maybe with more cause for optimism than after the corresponding fixtures of recent years. The Blues faithful now won't, and shouldn't, accept too many honourable losses in 2019.
Geelong closed more convincingly against Collingwood on Friday night, with Gary Ablett personifying the Cats' willingness to prove there is life in the old legs. At the time, it looked like being the upset of the round. It barely rates a mention now.
Port Adelaide threw caution to the wind at the selection table and in the middle as it outran, outthought and outmuscled the highly-fancied Dees for what Ken Hinkley has labelled the best win of his Power reign. Port was infectious, with the steady hand of Justin Westhoff combining with the likes of Zac Butters and Xavier Duursma for the perfect mix of youth and experience.
It wasn't the Port Adelaide, or Melbourne, we were told to expect. In truth, the Power looked a hell of a lot like what the Crows were supposed to be.
What happened there? The off-season expectation of a glorious return to Adelaide glory is, on this early evidence, a false prophecy. There were some big losers in round one, but seven goals on the Crows' home deck is a sobering return, and the loss of Tom Doedee is injury on top of insult.
On the other hand, the Hawks were a pleasant surprise in the limited way Hawthorn being good at football can be considered a surprise. They'll play the Western Bulldogs next week fresh off a spirited opening display of their own in what threatens to be a quick and slick game of footy.
Then up north on Saturday night came the perfect storm. These Brisbane Lions have spent six months growing tighter and tighter, building up a force of energy that was just waiting to explode at the Gabba. They probably would have beaten anyone on that night, such was the overwhelming momentum that turned into such fast and ferocious footy, but that it was the reigning premiers that were thwarted makes it that bit more impressive.
The Eagles, brought undone by a rampant opposition and humid Brisbane night that made their love of possession difficult and anything less than full commitment insufficient, will reflect on last year's round one result and look to move on. But there was a meekness to the second-half response that has clearly left Adam Simpson concerned.
West Coast's next test will come at home against GWS next Saturday night, and it will be sizable. The Giants weren't exactly written off in the off-season, because they simply weren't written about. Not like, say, Essendon, who according to so many were primed to take that mythical "next step".
How quickly a narrative can change. The Giants were as impressive as anybody this weekend, and the Bombers clearly the worst of all comers. John Worsfold can ill afford too many days like this one now that expectation has begun to soar, but this is unlikely to be the last drubbing the Giants dish out in 2019.
It was win-or-bust for the Saints against the Suns, but somehow St Kilda managed to find away to manage both. An unconvincing one-point collapsing over the line against Gold Coast isn't going to do much for Alan Richardson, nor will the inability for the self-proclaimed "fittest team in the league" to run away from fledgling opposition.
And then there was Fremantle. The biggest surprise of the most befuddling of rounds. Has Lyon been playing the long game this whole time? A 15-year coaching career spent tricking us into thinking he's one thing before randomly picking his moment to reveal he's something else entirely?
Now the trickiest question is how to fit Jesse Hogan into this Dockers forward line. Because somehow they managed to play tall up forward, fast through the middle and off half-back while still playing the Lyon lock-down of their forward 50. If you're purple-inclined, you must be on cloud nine.
And so that was that. Enough stories for an entire season crammed into nine games and four days. We might have just managed to make sense of it by the time round two begins.
But the only thing dumber than making sweeping preseason predictions before round one would be to rip them all up before round two.
And that's the most exciting thing — if just one week could confound so many expectations, what will the next six months have in store?
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