As far as the thousands of individuals player statistics go, it might just have been the most important single one of the entire AFL season.

At the very least it provided Collingwood with a massive inspiration boost, according to forward Travis Cloke.

Magpie defender Heath Shaw's desperate lunge at Nick Riewoldt which prevented the St Kilda skipper scoring what looked like the easiest of goals late in the first term of Saturday's AFL grand final was certainly the smother of the year.

Cloke described Shaw's effort as an "amazing goal-saving" effort which spurred the team on to push even further ahead.

"That's what wins you grand finals and I know a lot of the boys got a lot of confidence out of that.

"For Heath to do something like that ... he could have easily let it go through for a goal and it's just an amazing achievement by Heath as an individual.

"It got the boys on song and we really knew at that time we were on and we really wanted to make the most of this, we didn't want to let it slip and ruin our year."

Cloke said the team realised only in the last quarter that they knew they had victory sewn up as they went on to cruise to a 16.12 (108) to 7.10 (52) win.

"Ten minutes in, that's when we knew it, but at the same time we knew we wanted to finish the game off because we wanted to have a good result on our hands.

"You never want to let a team back in - we wanted to kick goal after goal and really put it out of their reach and make the most of the opportunities.

"At the same time we wanted to really enjoy ourselves while we were out there because we knew that game was probably wrapped up and we just wanted to enjoy the feeling, the sensation out there in front of 100,000 people," he said.

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