There are snap judgments all over the place today, but let’s start where 80,000 of us spent our Sunday afternoon.
There were no theatrics or histrionics this time and little need for heroics.
The next instalment was instead a stark measure of trajectories and a realisation of just how wide the gap now is between Collingwood and Carlton.
50 minutes of football was all that was needed.
The Magpies blitzed the Blues to hold a 44-point lead before time on of the second quarter.
It was less than what we hoped for as a contest but lacked nothing as a spectacle.
The fights got the blood pumping.
The matchups were prize fights – Darcy Moore on Charlie Curnow, Scott Pendlebury on Patrick Cripps.
They threw jabs through the opening minutes before Collingwood upped the ante to combination punches and Carlton had no answer.
The Magpies played with dare, almost devil may care. So smooth when they attacked and undeterred when it came unstuck.
By contrast, Carlton spent the day on the horns of a dilemma.
There was a palpable desire for the Blues to go fast, to take the aggressive option, to take the game on.
But when they did, they invariably turned the ball over or couldn’t retain it.
Blind kicks forward, long bombs to no one in particular or, worse, direct to Moore.
When Carlton tried the slick handball game they missed the connection by just enough to thwart the movement and get caught holding the ball.
When they tried to create, Jack Silvagni slipped when clear, invited the pressure, then got it back and botched the kick - a direct turnover that resulted in a goal.
Jacob Weitering took a splendid one-handed mark only to wait far too long and have the kick picked off and rushed down for Mihocek’s next major.
Adam Saad on the wrap-around injected the speed but the kick when straight to Isaac Quaynor.
The list was endless. The Blues were their own worst enemy. It was dispiriting and deflating.
Time and again the comparison was damning.
The final indignity was when Sam Walsh gallantly won a free kick on the chase-down tackle and took the conservative option sideways at half-back… only to kick it straight out on the full.
The Blues could come up with nothing to match the thrilling run of Bobby Hill or the terrific leap of Ash Johnson.
At the intervals on the concourse, around the corridors and in the lift those of a Navy Blues persuasion pondered of their arch-nemesis.
Could Carlton have been this team? Sacrilege though it might be, could they emulate the Collingwood method?
Player for player is the Collingwood team that much better than Carlton?
But it’s styles that make fights and pound for pound it made for a lopsided contest.
The second half was reduced to a battlefield, a slogging, punishing affair not without merit but without any hope of reeling in the deficit.
Michael Voss lamented defence but it was the deficiencies in ball movement and the associated skill that defined this day.
By the end, the masses of Carlton fans walked away from the MCG with long faces, heavy hearts and grim realities.