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Perhaps the Bulldogs winning the grand final from seventh last year said more about the evenness of the competition than simply the brilliance of one team.
The way the first half of the 2017 season has unfolded would certainly suggest so, with the league being more unpredictable than ever before.
Gone are the days of top four teams bullying those on the bottom of the ladder, when it seemed as though the regular season was a mere formality played out to increase the percentage of the powerhouses.
If Carlton upstaging the Giants two weeks ago wasn’t evidence enough, then surely Hawthorn beating the Crows away from home this weekend provides some confirmation. Its safe to say footy tipping has never been such an arduous task.
The development of such an even competition is paramount not only to the players and their individual desires, but more importantly to the supporter bases, without which the game would not be viable.
Fans are able to turn up each week with a realistic expectation that their team will be competitive, regardless of ladder position, for perhaps the first time in the history of the game.
The same cannot be said for sports such as soccer, where some supporters will spend their whole lives waiting for a success that is financially impossible.
The results we’re seeing didn’t come about by accident, they are the product of a constant reviewing of trends and the overwhelming desire to grow the game. Although the AFL had a draft system that favoured equalisation as well as a salary cap, there was still a correlation between football department spending and on-field success.
The soft cap on this spending was implemented in 2015, primarily to minimise the gap between the best and worst teams, and if recent results are anything to go by, it has been a major triumph.
There is certainly a tendency for the general public to be rather quick in pointing out the deficiencies of the AFL and its management, particularly in relation to rule changes and more minor issues.
However there is no doubt that a focus on the bigger picture with stringent guidelines and a system based around fairness, the AFL have delivered a competition that rivals anything in the world.
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