In his wildest dreams, Adam Kingsley could not have dreamed of a better first two quarters and 19 minutes of Saturday night’s semi final.

His GWS, fresh off their qualifying final capitulation, were outrunning, outhunting, and comprehensively outplaying Brisbane. He himself was running rings around Chris Fagan in the coaches box, giving out the sort of tactical smashing that brings with it the most intense of scrutiny, especially when it results in a season’s demise.

Sam Taylor and Jack Buckley were impassable in defence; Tom Green winning hard ball after hard ball in the midfield; Toby Bedford was clamping Lachie Neale and James Peatling giving Dayne Zorko more to think about than at any stage of his All-Australian season; up forward, Jesse Hogan was handing a hampered Jack Payne a bath of epic proportions.

The Giants’ lead was 44 points, the Lions were on the canvas, and Geelong were watching on nervously as a side many see as bona fide premiership contenders, if not favourites, put another major contender to the sword.

This is the story of the nightmare that followed.

Of the Giants first slackening their choke hold on the Lions, then surrendering all structure in the face of a withering Brisbane onslaught, then making mistake after mistake after mistake to squander resistance they appeared to have put to bed with two late goals before three-quarter time and then the first of the last.

This is the story of the greatest choke since the Colliwobbles.

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And whatever heartbreak was felt by the Giants following Sydney’s comeback from 21 points down in week 1 of the finals, this must be a million times worse.

Littered throughout history are the corpses of strong, formidable teams broken by losses less disastrous than this one.

Some mistakes were big, others small; some were errors borne of the intense pressure, first physical and then psychological, the Lions applied to wrest back into the contest, while others will lead to summer-long nightmares for some of GWS’ biggest and best.

Jesse Hogan lies distraught as Jack Payne celebrates Brisbane’s semi final win. (Photo by Cameron Spencer/Getty Images)

Many were signs you didn’t realise signalled a turn of the tide until the tsunami – of the maroon, blue and gold variety and not orange – arrived on ENGIE Stadium’s shores; the first of which, at the very first centre bounce after Lachie Ash’s goal extended the margin to its 44-point zenith, came from Bedford.

With his tag on Neale only extending to around the grounds, rather than at centre bounces, it was still decidedly odd to see Bedford lining up in the centre for the ball up, with James Peatling minding the Lions superstar. Stranger still when, as the ball was bounced, Bedford paid no regard to his opponent, Will Ashcroft, and made a beeline for the feet of Kieren Briggs, ready to rove and send the Giants forward.

Except, Oscar McInerney won the tap this time, and where Bedford should have been guarding the loose space behind the ball to prevent a clean breakaway forward, as the Giants had done so successfully all night long, this time there was no one to stop Will Ashcroft winning the loose ball landing straight in his lap, spreading wide to the overlapping Jarrod Berry, and launching a play that ended with the one thing GWS wished to stop at all costs: a one-on-one out the back into an open 50, with Berry’s kick finding Kai Lohmann in space in the pocket for what seemed at the time a consolation goal.

In hindsight, we know better. This was the moment the Giants, by either overconfidence or miscommunication or just plain sloppiness, started to slip.

Fast forward two minutes, and another key GWS error hands Brisbane their second. Facing a defensive-50 boundary throw-in, the Giants must know of McInerney’s pet trick as a ruckman: to body his opponent out of the way, grab the ball, and whack it on his boot as quickly as possible.

Inside 50, that’s the play Tom Hawkins has made his own for the last half-decade, that famously led to two first-quarter goals against an ill-prepared Swans in the 2022 grand final. The Giants were similarly caught napping.

Briggs, who has dominated the air for much of the night, makes the fatal mistake of immediately jostling for front position, thereby playing exactly into McInerney’s hands: it’s the easiest thing in the world for the Big O to use his strength against him and shunt him under ball.

Just as poor from the Giants, though, was the lack of preparation for what should have been an obvious gambit: sitting out the back of the throw-in, both Harry Himmelberg and Callan Ward are more focused on looking for speedy Lions zooming into the congestion and looking for a McInerney tap-down. They’re too slow to realise it’s the ruckman himself who poses the greatest threat.

To the Lions’ credit, many of their goals came from their own brilliance, rather than GWS errors: the third goal of their five-goal third term burst that broke the match open came via Ashcroft standing up in a desperate Ash tackle at the teeth of goal, somehow finding the strength in second-year legs coming back off an ACL rupture, and win a kick to the line easily volleyed home by Charlie Cameron.

Yes, Connor Idun initially beginning to lay the front-on tackle that would have killed the ball and allowed for a throw-up was an error in judgement, but Ashcroft’s brilliance, as for much of the second half, was undeniable.

As was the spectacularly perfect centre clearance, long ball in, expert rove by Zac Bailey and brilliant snap from 40 out that ensued mere second later.

With 8 minutes and 42 seconds left in the third quarter, the Giants led by 44. With five minutes six remaining, it’s back to 19. Game on.

Suddenly, Giants who had had the measure of their opponents all match were beginning to panic: Peatling, whose role as a defensive forward had netted him two first-term goals and the sort of mistakes from Dayne Zorko rare as hen’s teeth in the home-and-away season and elimination final, has his first clumsy moment of the game, failing to get low enough to tackle his charge correctly as he lunges at the ball inside the Lions’ 50 and giving away a free kick.

Another goal.

Still, when the Giants steadied for three consecutive goals – Hogan a towering figure in the first two – and the margin drifted back to 35, it seemed like the storm had been weathered.

There had been mistakes from the hosts, but none severe enough to turn the tide on their own, and once Brisbane’s burst of brilliance, especially around stoppages, fizzled out, the match, it seemed, was toast again.

It’s at this point where the Giants began to bottle it spectacularly.

It begins unluckily, with Brent Daniels giving up a 50m penalty for quite understandable confusion at who out of Payne and Harris Andrews had won a defensive 50 free kick, his caution at not repeating a first-quarter mistake by handing it to the wrong player costing him.

Going forward, though, the Giants’ structure behind the ball already seems troubled: the Lions have isolated their star defenders in Buckley and Taylor, dragged them deep, and allowed space to open up coming towards the kicker provided they’re smart. The clincher? Charlie Cameron opposed to the taller, slower Harry Himmelberg, whose defensive instincts have been shown up quite regularly throughout the season.

Himmelberg’s first mistake as the ball scrubs inside 50, arriving on the bounce, is that he goes to ground while allowing the ball to spill past him: you can’t afford to give a moment’s space to Charlie Cameron.

Then, he compounds the error by abandoning his post – leaving Cameron free, he looks to impede Callum Ah Chee, already being tackled by a Giants teammate: all Himmelberg’s desperate intervention leaves is a free Cameron over the top for the handball.

He doesn’t miss.

Up next is the mistake that will burn the most, the kind of horrific, coach-killing blunder on which the horrors that ensued were based on but could never hope to exceed.

As Isaac Cumming blasts the ball long inside 50 for the Giants, towards a two-on-two as Aaron Cadman looks to engage with Andrews and allow Hogan a mano e mano with Payne, a free kick is plucked: Andrews pinged for holding the second-year Giant.

Directly in front, with no angle to speak of, the Giants’ lead looks certain to swell to 24 points.

Enter Brent Daniels.

For unfathomable reasons – the crowd surely wasn’t big enough to drum up the volume necessary to drown out the umpire’s whistle – Daniels not only chooses to take the advantage, but to do so in the silliest, riskiest way imaginable. Free in the goalsquare, with no Lions close, he tries to soccer the ball off the ground. And he makes an absolute meal of it.

It’s the mother of all bullets dodged for Brisbane; for Daniels, it’s a moment that will haunt him all summer long, and probably for even longer than that.

The same goes, though not quite to an equal extent, for Lachie Keeffe: a few minutes later, having won a free kick almost directly in front and 40 metres out for a hold from McInerney, the veteran Giant, so crucial in a negating tall forward role helping keep Andrews occupied, badly misses.

Two opportunities to all but put the margin beyond Brisbane; both squandered badly.

But while Daniels’ blunder was the most disastrous, there’s one Giant who made more errors than any other from here; and if you’d have told me that that man was Sam Taylor before it happened, I’d have refused to believe you.

Yet the star defender’s final 10 minutes of the semi final were a disaster orders of magnitude worse than anything he has produced since breaking out a few years ago as perhaps the game’s best key defender.

For starters, as Conor McKenna, with eight and a half minutes left, thumps the footy long inside the Lions’ 50, Taylor is in pole position: edging towards the drop zone of the ball, which he reads better than most, he has engaged with Joe Daniher to deny him a run and jump at the ball, and is strong enough to hold his ground in the optimum position.

Except, when he goes to spoil – one-handed – he clean misses the ball. A fresh airie.

It means the ball hits the ground and spills out the back, where the Giants, boasting a very tall backline, are most vulnerable. And as it rolls, it eventually sits up perfectly for Zorko, sent forward midway through the third term, to soccer through the goal.

The margin? 16 points; but a very shaky 16 points indeed.

There are six minutes and 49 seconds on the clock when the next key mistake is made – it’s another star, this time Toby Greene, who errs.

Going desperately for a loose ball in the dead centre of the ground, Greene gathers on hands and knees, sees Eric Hipwood arriving for a tackle… and he panics. Without even looking, he flings out a handpass over his shoulder, even further into the corridor – the area the Giants have tried to deny the Lions space all match long.

It’s straight to Brandon Starcevich, who compounds the turnover by shrugging a Darcy Jones tackle following a fumble, handpassing clear into the path of Eric Hipwood, who in turn gives to Jaspa Fletcher via Hugh McCluggage.

Notable in this whole run is that the Lions, 4.12 at the start of the comeback with some more hilariously awful misses, are suddenly nailing every shot they get.

So when the second-year Fletcher hits the 50, steadies, and goes for home, of course it never deviates. The competition’s most famously inaccurate team simply cannot miss.

Fast forward to three minutes and 54 seconds left – the margin, still seven points the Giants’ way. After an intercept mark on defensive wing, McInerney, sensing the urgency, pulls out a torpedo to pump the ball inside 50.

It’s the kind of ball Taylor, now loose in defence as the Giants try to stack numbers behind the ball, has eaten for breakfast for three years plus. Yet for some, unfathomable reason – maybe the swing of the ball on a breezy Sydney night, or maybe it was briefly lost in the floodlights – he fails to react until it becomes clear the ball is going to get away from him.

Once again, the minute that footy hits the ground, with Taylor, Connor Idun and Cameron in hot pursuit, danger lurks. And sure enough, Taylor errs: suddenly racing Daniher to the footy, his desperate lunge at the ball, coinciding with the Lion trying to force him past it, sees the ball ricochet off his flailing arms and out of bounds.

Was the call of insufficient intent the correct one? It depends on what replay you look at; but Taylor’s big mistake wasn’t the touch that sealed his fate, it was momentarily abandoning his pursuit of the loose ball to make body contact with the onrushing Daniher, trying to block him off the footy rather than going for it himself.

From the free kick, hemmed right in on the wrong side for a non-Lance Franklin left-footer, Daniher, the most comically inconsistent set shot in the league, the man who snaps from 15 out directly in front and misses, he who has blazed away from 50 several times this match alone to send the ball soaring out on the full, kicks the most extraordinary goal of the night.

Three minutes and 37 seconds remain. The margin? A solitary point.

And GWS are about to produce their most decisive errors of all.

From a ball-up at half-forward for the Giants, Tom Green, as he has for most of the night, grabs control of the footy; nearby, Lachie Whitfield sags off his man, hoping to be found with a handball from his star teammate.

But McCluggage’s grip is too strong; and as Whitfield realises the handpass won’t make it to him, he’s already overcommitted, and left a free path for Berry to run straight through, bypass the congestion, and whack it long.

Ahead of the footy, the Giants are in shambles: no loose man has been set up, inexplicable given both the margin and the stakes. All around, it’s one on ones – Rayner on Buckley, Dunkley on Ash, and deepest, Daniher one out on Taylor.

Buckley nearly makes the big play, but his spoil forward, as if willed by the footy gods, bounces over two Giants teammates, and right to Lohmann. With the second of time available to him, the young Lion steadies, and drives the ball deep inside 50, hoping like hell he’s given Daniher enough to work with.

Once again, Taylor engages with Daniher early, just as he did before that fresh airie spoil a few minutes earlier. And once again, just as he did under the McInerney torpedo a minute before, he horribly misjudges where the ball is going to drop.

As a result, all Daniher needs to do is avoid jostling back against Taylor: once he breaks clear of their grapple, he’s in the perfect spot to mark out of the reach of the Giant’s despairing spoil. Taylor was, to put it simply, defending the wrong spot.

20 metres out and on the sort of angle that sets Lions fans nerves jangling whenever Daniher lines up because it’s a goal every key forward should kick, but not so easy that it’s impossible to miss.

Yet for the second time in a minute, Daniher rises to the occasion. And the Lions, at the eleventh hour, are in front.

Two minutes and 26 seconds remain, and it’s the Giants, suddenly, who are praying for the miracle.

From here, the mistakes are smaller: Peatling’s desperate kick from half-forward under heavy pressure landing in a nest of Lions for Zac Bailey to intercept; the smallest of Bedford fumbles attempting to rove a Briggs tap with 12 seconds left, letting Ashcroft gather possession and bang it as far forward as he can; Taylor not guarding Daniher’s left boot in a one-on-one contest under that Ashcroft kick, letting him win possession and scrap it even further forward, out of harm’s way at last.

But they are immaterial: this was a match already lost to them.

Lost by error after error from their biggest stars down. Lost by the absence of numbers behind the ball to deny exactly the sort of open paddock Daniher, or indeed any rangy key forward, dreams of.

Lost by missed spoils, misjudged balls, poor handpasses, loose checking, and a soccer from the top of the goalsquare after taking the advantage.

And so it came to pass that GWS’ season was torched by their own recklessness.

The only question now is whether a team already burdened by the heartbreak of finals near-misses past will at last be broken beyond all repair by this, the most devastating defeat of them all.