While Melbourne Cup Day provided Melbourne's masses with a labor-free day last Tuesday, the latest instalments of 'The Bombers: Stories of a Great Club' continued to run down the straight unimpeded.
Although episodes 3 and 4 of theย 'Fox Sports' aired docuseries charted the Dons' lean years of the 70s and early-80s, the latest pair were bookended by premiership glory for the famous old club.
Having taken an outsider's view of the sterling stills, snippets and stories of the past fortnight, I've once again poured through the record books and pondered another set of questions that arose across the series' penultimate week.
So, before the final set of chapters are aired and completed next week, here are another 10 queries that cropped up from the recount of Essendon's most recent golden age.
How many times could the โBaby Bombers' 1993 campaign have come off the tracks?
Although the 1993 season provided Essendon with close to a full trophy case of achievements, the ultimate prize was almost outside of their grasp on multiple occasions.
While it may seem like a waste of time questioning the merit of a side that claimed both the night and day flags with a roster that contained the Michael Tuck, Norm Smith and Brownlow Medallists for the year, the numbers show that the 1993 ladder finished closer than the 2011 Melbourne cup.
Following a strangely scheduled regular season in which each of the competition's 15 teams played 20 games and enjoyed two byes, the final gap between fifth on the ladder and a place in the bottom four was just a pair of wins.
Despite Essendon's 13-1-6 record proving enough to see them claim the minor premiership, the margin of just one-and-a-half per cent over the Blues proved that the Bombers' place atop the season's summit was far from a cakewalk.
Add in the fact that the Dons were behind on the scoreboard during major intervals in six of these 13 victories and this storied season with its catchy alliterative tag could easily have been one that ended short of September success.
If this wasn't enough, had a sudden onset of flatulence not occurred in the Adelaide dressing rooms at half-time of the preliminary final, the Crows' 42-point lead may have proven insurmountable for the Sheedy's youthful outfit.
However, as the club's 15th cup still sits behind lock and key at Tullamarine, any efforts to pry it away are completely futile.
