As the spotlight followed Geelong's dejected players walking from the MCG on Saturday night, a club legend quietly left the stands without significant fanfare.

Tom Hawkins — the club's games record holder — had watched on nervously throughout the game, hopes still alive that a grand final berth could keep the flickering flame of his career alive.

But as that final siren bellowed around the ground, the reality struck that it was all over. A career that stretched 18 years and three premierships, quietly extinguished in the background of one of the great preliminary finals.

If Buddy Franklin was the unstoppable force of the past two decades, Hawkins was the immovable object.

With a frame more suited to the bullocking brutality of yesteryear, Hawkins never had the speed nor the leap of his more spectacular contemporaries in Franklin and Jack Riewoldt, but instead bullied his opponents into submission with an unfashionable mix of strength and forward craft.

This was not a career of individual highlights. 

There was the occasional strong pack mark here, the odd fluky goal there, yet the sum of all Hawkins's achievements on the field has, quite appropriately, been one that basks in the shared glory of team success.

A player just as likely to hand a goal off to a teammate as he was to take the shot himself, the big lump of a lad from the farm rarely needed to be the match that lit the dried tinder of the fire pit.

He was the log that glowed with a radiant heat throughout the night, occasionally sparking into flame, but mostly keeping that rhythmic pulse of the slow burn that ensures the fire as a whole doesn't go out.

And like those chunks of firewood, it took time for Hawkins to reach his ignition point.

Great expectations and lofty comparisons

The pressure lumped onto those broad shoulders of a teenage Hawkins when he arrived at Kardinia Park was immense.

A decade on from the sheer brilliance of Gary Ablett Sr owning the key forward position, the Cats had tried, and failed, and tried again, to fill the spot with all manner of sins.

There were recycles from the West in Brett Spinks, Mitchell White, and David Haynes. 

Out of position experiments in Ben Graham and Clint Bizzell. 

Pre-debut hype that never came to fruition in Cameron Roberts and Marcus Baldwin. 

And of course, the unfairly maligned Kent Kingsley, who managed to kick 227 goals in 110 games for the club, despite being an undersized key forward often forced to play a lone hand, while being fed by an inexperienced midfield.

In Hawkins, Cats fans saw the great hope of a goalkicking behemoth. The answer to all their mismatched and mis-hit forward woes.

Rated as arguably the best player in his draft year, he arrived at Sleepy Hollow in 2007 virtually for free as a father-son pick, just before the bidding system for father-sons had been created (in part due to how easy it was for the Cats to get Hawkins).

After the Cats lost a deflating season-opener to the Bulldogs, coach Mark Thompson was quick to bring the 18-year-old into the fold.

And the impact was instant.

Booting three goals on debut in a 78-point demolition of Carlton, Hawkins's performance earned the highest praise of Blues coach Denis Pagan after the game.

"He looks a likely type," Pagan said after the match. 

"And I couldn't help but think he is an 18-year-old Tony Lockett.''

In game one, Hawkins was already being compared to the greatest goalkicker the league had ever seen — and not by the nuffiest of fans on footy forums — but by a coach that very much knew what he was talking about.

The following games would be hit and miss. Bags of four against the then lowly Demons and Tigers. Goalless performances against the then finals bound Kangaroos, Eagles, Pies, and Bulldogs. 

He would be in the team for a stretch, then out, then back in again, then eventually out for that magical drought-breaking premiership, as Thompson favoured a forward line spearheaded by Cameron Mooney and Nathan Ablett.

The next year would be much the same. A handful of games, a handful of goals, and eventually a preference for Mooney and Tom Lonergan to tag team up front.

By 2009, he was the consistently picked sideshow to the Mooney main act, showing potential, but rarely brilliance, as he kicked 34 goals and played a crucial role in the spectacular grand final victory against St Kilda.

By 2010, though, subtle little injuries in a still growing body would drag Hawkins back in the pecking order behind the recently recruited James Podsiadly, managing just 21 goals from his 18 games, including one major in three finals, as Thompson experimented with using him in the ruck.

In the outer at Kardinia Park, the criticism was starting to be bellowed with greater assurance. Too slow. Not urgent enough. Not enough forward pressure. A general look of perceived disinterest compared to the ever fiery Mooney.

They were unfair aspersions on a 22-year-old still learning his trade — and in just over a year, he was about to prove to why.

Tony Lockett he was not.

Tom Hawkins, he was about to become.

Hawkins arrives on the biggest stage of all

With ten minutes to go in the first half of the 2011 grand final, James Podsiadly fell to the MCG turf hard, shattering his collarbone and the hopes of Cats fans around the country in one painful moment.

The mature age recruit had been Geelong's focal point all year, leading the club goalkicking for the season as Mooney was phased out of the team by new coach Chris Scott.

Hawkins, again, had played a minor sideshow role, with just 24 goals to his name as the Cats took on the might of Collingwood.

Down by 10 points as Podsiadly was carted of the field in severe pain, the Cats were forced to turn to plan B — hand Hawkins the forward 50, cross your fingers, say your prayers, and hope that something went right.

What followed would go down in footy folklore.

On paper, it was just three second half notches in the goals column of the Footy Record to Hawkins.

But in the flesh, it was the making of a player who would become a Geelong legend. 

Handed the freedom to control the forward 50 to his liking, Hawkins bullied opponent Ben Reid, using sheer strength to push him away from the drop zone of the ball time and time again, showing signs of becoming the player that those who knew footy the best had predicted he would be.

"Hawkins again!" Anthony Hudson would scream on the commentary as the Tomahawk plucked a one-handed grab early in the final quarter.

"Oh this is amazing — who is this man?"

On the biggest stage in footy, Tom Hawkins had introduced the footy world to the player he would become for the next 12 years. A monster. A spearhead. A rock.

The immovable object had well and truly arrived. And the Geelong forward line was his to own.

The big kid becomes a club legend

For the next 11 years Hawkins would lead Geelong's goalkicking, adding a Coleman Medal for good measure to his name in the disjointed 2020 season.

But throughout it all, the ultimate success had eluded a Cats team that had constantly shown it was good enough to make it to the finals, but not good enough to beat generational teams like Hawthorn and Richmond when it really mattered.

To call it a drought would be unfair to those teams that experienced true prolonged heartache — but by the time the 2022 grand final had arrived, to many it had felt like a lifetime.

In club land, great players had come and gone. Stands had been demolished and built. Injuries endured and mended.

Outside of club land, fans and players alike had seen life change for better and for worse.

There would be new found relationships. Marriages started and ended. Nephews, nieces, sons, and daughters would be brought into the world. 

Parents and grandparents would depart it.

A decade is a long time in footy — but it's a lot longer in life.

And on that final Saturday in September, in a game where he had again dominated with brute strength and footy smarts, the toll of life showed on Tom Hawkins's face.

Embracing his best mate and long time teammate Joel Selwood at the final siren, the tears flowed freely.

Since that day in 2011, on the field he had become a Geelong legend.

Off it, he had become a husband. A dad. And he had lost his mum, Jennifer, to cancer — a moment that had him considering whether he had the will to keep going with his footy career.

Time, as always, had proven it was both the unstoppable force and the immovable object.

And for many Cats fans, this entire journey with Hawkins has been about more than just footy. 

For more than half the year, every year since he debuted — and having likely never met the man — Geelong supporters have welcomed him into their lives as if he is an old friend.

His retirement is an odd feeling of loss. Richmond fans felt it when Dustin Martin called time. It will be felt at the Crows when Tex Walker says goodbye, and at the Pies when Scott Pendlebury decides enough is enough.

A new era now begins at Geelong as one of the most important figures in the history of the football club hangs up his gigantic boots. And it's been one hell of a ride.

For an immovable object, it's a testament to the player and the man that the career of Tom Hawkins has managed to move so many.