Thoughts on the AFL finals...

Random thoughts scurrying about my brain…

What would you have bet on, say, September 1st, that the last “bottom four” team remaining alive in the finals this season would have been West Coast? (And would the odds have been triple that a week earlier?)...

So many things in life and sport look obvious in retrospect. Like the effect of the mental exhaustion that matched the physical exhaustion the Eagles suffered after the trip to and from Adelaide (with the game of the year so far in between, given the stakes), followed by the cross-nation journey for perhaps the team with the oldest core in the league. I’m not specifically a West Coast fan, but I hope the taste of the loss at Spotless doesn’t wash away the savoring of that famous extra-extra-time victory seven days previous for WA fans….

Similarly, in retrospect, considering that Sydney had seemingly been playing elimination finals games since May, it’s not unreasonable to presume that they might lose one somewhere along the way (besides to Hawthorn, I mean). It was just the size of the lost was shocking….

Great players are great players no matter what. Make Patrick Dangerfield a full time scoring forward, and he’d challenge for the Coleman. Make him your ruckman, and he’d be winning sixty percent of his hitouts. Make him your key defenseman and Alex Rance would have a challenger for his informal title. Make him your player-coach and Chris Scott would probably willingly slide over to assistant. (Maybe not.)

In fact, it would be fascinating to see a team filled with each of those multi-talented superstars flipping positions against, for example, a mid-level AFL team. Put Lance Franklin in the ruck for awhile. Let Nat Fyfe play in the goal square. Have Dustin Martin and Alex Rance trade positions for awhile. The AFL is one of the very few sports in the world where pure athleticism is the primary requirement at nearly every position - sure, you generally want your tall blokes up front or jumping ruck, but footy’s not like basketball or American football, where spots are so specialized that if you can’t play the position you’re physically designed for, you’re out of a job….

Back in March, the three teams everyone thought would be jockeying for the premiership right about now were the Western Bulldogs, the Sydney Swans, and the GWS Giants. Instead, it’s Adelaide and Richmond who have the inside track right now. The Crows were a consensus “second tier” contender, usually falling from 4th to 6th in most forecasts, and almost everyone had the Tigers in the “find-a-new-coach” sweepstakes, not hosting a preliminary final at the MCG this weekend. Geelong was somewhere alongside Adelaide in the prediction lottery, happy if they made the second week of finals. And just a week ago, the Giants were written off by anyone who watched their level of determination at Adelaide Oval (or lack thereof); after an eleven-goal win at home, it seems that their prognosis has at least softened, if not partially flipped. Think you can predict next year’s champion in advance? We can’t even forecast THIS year’s at this point!...

This is the week that the Battle for the Bye combatants have been waiting fifty-one weeks for: if Adelaide and Richmond come out suffering from the symptoms of having played just one game over the previous 26 days, everyone who sides with Alastair Clarkson will have all the ammunition they need, whether the Crows and/or Tigers end up winning narrowly or not. Conversely, Gillon McLachlan must be secretly hoping for the peace that only two dominant home wins can bring the proponents of the post-round 23 bye week. I don’t have a dog in this fight - I see plenty of pros and cons to the extra week - but proof that it’s harmful to the teams winning the qualifying finals would change my mind, and presumably everyone else’s….

Since the current format of two qualifying finals (pitting the top four seeds against each other with the double chance) and two elimination finals (placing seeds 5-8 in a winner moves on, loser goes home scenario) began in 2000, excluding last year’s bye week “implementation” or “experiment” (depending on your viewpoint), there have been 16 seasons of finals.

In 12 of those 16, the two teams who won the qualifying final (not always seeds one and two, but most often) also won their preliminary finals and met in the Grand Final. In the other four, one of the two teams won. That’s why last year’s 0-2 record was so striking - it had never happened before. If it happens again this year....

One of the greatest dramatic features of competitive sport - maybe THE greatest feature - is the consistent opportunity for redemption. Shakespeare has nothing on the sport of football, in any of its forms, and that’s in part due to the weekly nature of the competition. Six days allow for endless media speculation on every imaginable possibility to be played out. A humiliating defeat one week can be avenged the next...except during the playoffs, where one loss ends your dream and haunts you throughout the off-season.

At least, that’s what happens in MY home country. No American sport (to my knowledge) incorporates the “double chance” that Australia does into league finals series like the AFL. Both Geelong and GWS embarrassed themselves in their qualifying finals: Geelong’s fourth quarter collapse was surpassed only by the lack of pressure around the ball by the Giants for the entirety of their visit to Adelaide.

Within any single-elimination format, that would have left a rotten taste to put on the end of a top-of-the-ladder season-long performance - the Cats were tied for the best win/loss record in the league; the Giants, just a half-game behind. But in the AFL format, redemption was only a week away. And if either of them happen to reach the Grand Final and force a rematch against the team that defeated them three weeks earlier (either Geelong and Richmond, or GWS and Adelaide), that full-circle story of redemption on the game’s highest stage will be a huge talking point next week.

Over those last sixteen years of the current format (excluding last year), as mentioned before, there were twelve where that “redemption” story abruptly ended by prelim finals week, as the two teams who won the qualifiers won again in the prelim final (usually facing the opposite opponent from the top four). In those other four seasons, however, exactly one team earning the bye week won, and because of the format that meant there was a rematch of a qualifying final in each of those Grand Finals (2003, 2005, 2006, and 2015).

Every time, the team which LOST the qualifying final WON the Grand Final. That includes the third of Brisbane’s three-peat, Hawthorn’s romp over Fremantle in the third of their three-peat, and the amazing quartet of finals games between Sydney and West Coast in 2005-06. (I hadn’t remembered that the scores of the games in ‘06 were BOTH 85-84: in the Swans’ favor first, then the Eagles.)

It almost seems like the scenario lends itself to dramaticizing the revenge or redemption angle - the two three-peats from aging teams exerting their experience and poise to return to glory; the Swans reaching the long-lost pinnacle in 2005 and the Eagles redeeming themselves after their loss to Barry Hall and friends the next year.

Will the Giants overcome their travel bug and then face the Adelaide team that dominated them twice this season? Will the Cats avoid the Dangerfield revenge and move on to face the Tiger team that obliterated them at their supposed home three weeks prior? (The rubber game of the match: Geelong won at Kardinia in Round 20.) Or will the home teams hold serve as they have 12 of the past 17 years...or will it be like last year, and the visitors who haven’t had the long break win and we have a rematch of the Round 23 battle between Geelong and GWS for all the marbles?

That’s the fun of this time of year. The possibilities...

[Written for the Roar, Sept 18, 2017]