With the tremendous history of this AFL contest a week isn't too long to wait.
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Possibly the worst thing to come from Saturday's drawn grand final has nothing to do with the challenges of restaging the match: it is the inevitable call to disallow a similar result in future by introducing extra time.
It's a poor reflection of our need for instant gratification even if we understand that it means receiving a diminished product. We know fast food outlets offer second-rate fare, but the stuff proliferates.
And it is an excellent illustration of our inability to deal with the outcome least likely, the uncertain and the nuanced. The same impulses were apparent in the impatience that for some accompanied the protracted outcome of the August federal election.
For as long as the game has been played teams have entered the contest aware there were three possible outcomes: victory, defeat, or by way of some consolation, an honourable draw. That for some evidently is no longer acceptable. The generation that lost patience with Test cricket, opting instead for the one-day version of that game until it decided that something even shorter called Twenty20 would suffice, now wants to dispatch football's third way.
A draw is inconvenient and it is frustrating, but it also adds drama to the eventual result. By the time Saturday's game began the competing teams had been in training for about 10 months and in serious competition for more than six months.
After two hours they could not be separated, so now we settle the issue with something that resembles a schoolboys' lightning premiership? Really, that's the way to go?
Ten or 20 minutes of extra time from two teams of athletes, any number of whom may by then be carrying injuries and are nearly spent by their efforts, is no substitute for a game played by the fit and able, and does not do justice to their preparation.
Sport is nothing without context and the back story, particularly to St Kilda's quest and role in this grand final, is compelling. It becomes more so for the challenge of regathering for a second contest.
To their supporters St Kilda's players are Saints, but to the rest of the competition this success-starved club has been the Aints.
A colleague, remarking on the club's ability to find failure when success seems to beckon, said last week that being a St Kilda fan is like being in a relationship with a serial philanderer who periodically swears to reform. You can be a couple of years out of relationship counselling with a partner who has seemingly recommitted to the straight and narrow, only to learn that during a post-Christmas party breakout they have succumbed to old temptations and are not expected home any time soon.
Collingwood's narrative is different, but absorbing. A club that has lost more grand finals than many clubs have contested has failed to win another, but like its opponent it too can grasp redemption.
These are stories that have developed over more than a century. One week longer is hardly too much to wait for a further denouement.
Of course, for those followers of the game who detest Collingwood, this week offers the possibility of witnessing two grand finals that the Magpies fail to win. There is something in this for almost everyone.
The limited history that exists - this circumstance has arisen only twice before in 114 years of top-level Australian football - suggests that the capacity for drama has now multiplied. In both previous instances, the original underdog usurped their more fancied opponent in the rematch.
Also, they did it by relatively comfortable margins: Melbourne winning by 39 points in 1948, and North Melbourne victorious by 27 points in 1977. It must be remembered that North Melbourne's opponent was Collingwood.
Something will be lost from the game if in the rush for a known outcome we lose touch with these underlying patterns. The push to dispense with what we have needs to be recognised as nothing other than an attempted quick fix for a problem that does not really exist. In any case we once knew enough to dismiss quick fixes as a second-best option.
Maybe too many of us now live in cities, remote from rural life where it is more easily understood that some things cannot be rushed, where there is a time to sow, and to reap, and sometimes to wait.
This is a time to savour rather than to wish away. Some things, wine, good food, and unfolding sporting narratives, take time.
Ian Munro is an Age senior writer.
