For the vast bulk of its 123-season history, the VFL or later AFL premiership has never really been contested on a truly level playing field.
With the exception of two periods totalling about 35 years, the fixture hasn’t consisted of each team playing every other team on the same number of occasions.
Finals, however exciting a climax they produce to the end of a football season, regularly undo teams with one ordinary performance, the ramifications completely disproportionate to the impact of winning or losing regular season games.
All of which is fine. Unlike most worldwide soccer competitions, for example, finishing the regular season on top of the table doesn’t guarantee you a title. Finals are part of the DNA of our game, and inextricably linked to most of our fondest memories of it.
There’s also the perception that some inequities effectively cancel each other out. Sure, Team X may get a leg up with a weighted draw which has it playing some of the weaker teams in the competition twice (and avoiding the stronger ones), but to win a premiership it still has to eventually beat the best.
But at what point does there become so many compromises to the integrity of a competition format and structure that people begin to ask just how reflective a premiership is of the season which has preceded it?
That’s a question being asked a lot more frequently of the AFL these days, and perhaps rightly so. And some even bigger questions are whether the league is at all worried by that, and if not, shouldn’t it be?
Three issues come to mind in this context, all having bubbled to the surface in relatively recent times. One is the pre-finals bye, instituted in 2016. Another is the question of home finals in general. And the last – perhaps most contentious of all – is the matter of the grand final venue.
This fourth pre-finals bye week has again thrown up a now annual debate about its ramifications. Home finals are a hot topic because of Geelong’s displeasure about not being able to host a qualifying final at its own GMHBA Stadium.
The grand final issue ramped up after Adelaide’s loss to Richmond two years ago, and again early last year when the AFL did a deal with the Victorian State Government which locked in the MCG as the host until at least 2057.
Why are all these debates gaining more traction more frequently? I think it’s because the various inequities are beginning to stack up. And that the rationales used to justify the AFL’s position are too often inconsistent and unconvincing.
Take home finals, for example. It was 1991 when we saw the first final played outside Victoria, West Coast hosting Hawthorn in a qualifying final. By then, the Eagles had already played in five finals, two of which by rights they could have hosted as the higher-qualified team.
One inequity was addressed. But for the next 13 years, the Eagles (several times), Adelaide and Brisbane all were still forced to “host” various finals against Victorian teams at Victorian venues because of a rule stipulating at least one final each week had to be played in Melbourne.
That, too, was eventually addressed. But the AFL created another rod for its own back in 2013 by allowing Geelong to play its qualifying final against Fremantle at Kardinia Park. Not outrageously, the Cats thought that should be the case for any subsequent first week finals match.
The principle is sound. The reality, when that opponent is Collingwood, and the ground capacity is only 36,000, is different. Well, in Victoria, anyway. But the AFL argument about maximising attendances falls over with another of this year’s first-week finals, Greater Western Sydney’s elimination final clash with the Western Bulldogs.
For a second time, the Giants will host the Bulldogs in a final at a ground with a capacity of only 24,000.
The AFL, theoretically, could instead make sure the SCG (with almost double that capacity at 46,000) was available. After all, it used to make the Swans play finals at the 83,500 capacity ANZ Stadium rather than the SCG. But maximising attendances in Sydney in finals no longer seems to be such a priority. That is an obvious contradiction.
The pre-finals bye, admittedly, has been a bit of a personal hobby horse of mine. But I think with good reason.
Its institution was primarily to prevent sides with ladder positions assured resting the bulk of their teams in the final home and away game, an opportunity both Fremantle and North Melbourne used over a few seasons.
Yes, that skewed the results of a handful of the 198 home and away games played each year. And so what? In other codes, like soccer, that might just be viewed simply as managing resources in pursuit of larger goals. But the AFL, with factors like football betting weighing too heavily, decided to crack a walnut with a sledgehammer.
I think the ramifications, even after three seasons, have already been significant.
Your stance on this argument depends, of course, upon how much of an advantage higher-qualified teams should get come finals time.
But nobody could doubt that in 2016, the pre-finals break enabled the Western Bulldogs to regain several key players for an elimination final in Perth who would not have made it to the line had the game been played the previous week. Do you deserve that sort of largesse if you finish only seventh?
More significantly, the pre-finals break means that teams which win their qualifying finals, earning a second week off, now end up playing just one game over a 26 or 27-day period.
Was that a factor in Geelong being jumped by Sydney seven-goals-to-none in its losing 2016 preliminary final? Or hot favourite Richmond being down 10 goals to two at half-time in its shock defeat against Collingwood last year?
In 16 seasons of the current final eight system before the bye’s inception (2000-15), of 32 qualifying final winners, 28 also went on to win their preliminary finals. In the three years of the pre-finals bye, it’s only three of six.
Yes, that’s a small sample size on the latter count. But if both qualifying final winners were to lose again this September and the figure become three of eight compared to 28 of 32, surely there would have to be serious questions asked about whether gaining a double chance (then winning a first final) has actually become a disadvantage.
And the grand final? Well, the length of that new contract makes it a moot point. But the AFL might end up eternally grateful for Dom Sheed’s match-winner for West Coast over Collingwood last year.
Had the Magpies hung on, that would have made six grand finals in a row in which a Victorian team had prevailed against one from interstate. And in five of those, in terms of ladder positions, it was the non-Victorian team which had earned hosting rights.
Yes, enough non-Victorian teams have, over the longer journey, been able to overcome that obvious handicap. But should they have to? Not if fairness is a higher priority than bums on seats. Which it clearly isn’t. Oh, except Sydney, apparently, and then only recently.
No team which ends up winning an AFL premiership doesn’t deserve it. But that some have to work harder than others to do so is unquestionable.
Personally, I’d like to see the hard work done over a six-month and 22-game period count for more, and the ramifications of either one bad day at the office at the wrong time after inadequate preparation or, far worse, the unintended consequences of a stroke of a legislative pen, count for far less.
Because the more examples there are of the latter, the more you open the door to the sorts of debates we’re hearing a lot more of these days. And the more you raise the possibility of a serious argument that ultimate success in the biggest sporting competition in the land is as much a lucky dip as a test of ability.
Rohan Connolly is one of Australia's foremost sportswriters – a veteran of both broadcast and print media. In the era of sanitised corporate sports media his is a perspective worth exploring. You can read more of Rohan's work atFOOTYOLOGY.
