Ben Cousins’ return to football, for which the AFL Commission paved the way on Tuesday, highlights the urgent need for the sport to make drastic changes to its drug-testing policy.

The present “three strikes” system is clearly inadequate, with a reported six players who have returned two positive tests continuing to play the game and chief executive Andrew Demetriou admitting he doesn’t know who they are.

Cousins, a self-confessed drug addict, was thrown out of football 12 months ago for “bringing the game into disrepute” without ever testing positive under the AFL system.

The commission imposed severe conditions when it agreed to allow him to enter the draft on November 29, or the pre-season draft, including giving up to three urine samples a week and four hair samples a year. If he doesn’t comply he can be suspended immediately pending an investigation into the alleged breach.

All of which is understandable, even though the players’ association is uncomfortable with it.

As chairman Mike Fitzpatrick said, the commission had to consider the interests of the game and of the wider community, as well as Cousins’ future, which could be bright if he continues with what appears so far to be a successful attempt at rehabilitation.

St Kilda and Brisbane, and to a lesser extent North Melbourne, have expressed varying degrees of interest in recruiting him, with the Lions favourites if they decide to go ahead – they have an earlier draft pick than the Saints.

Cousins deserves to have this chance. He’s done his time, admitted his problem and is trying to overcome it. As Demetriou put it on Tuesday, “he’s making a real effort to rehabilitate himself”. Good luck to him if he can.

Good luck, too, to the club that takes the punt on him. It’s a big call. There are never any guarantees that a former drug addict won’t relapse, as Demetriou was at pains to point out.

But what about those half dozen players whose identity is so zealously kept quiet under the league’s policy, even from its chief executive?

They’ve all tested positive two more times than Cousins, but all that’s happened to them is that they’re being monitored under the AFL’s policy. We don’t know how, or how often, they are tested, so essentially they belong to a protected species that doesn’t include Cousins.

So what’s the solution? It’s two-pronged – more effective testing, and goodbye to the three-strikes policy.

The AFL should set up a system under which it picks three games every week and has tests done at random on a number of players (say four or five) from both teams.

That’s 24 or 30 players a week, not an unreasonable number to be within the AFL’s financial and logistic resources.

Players who test positive to performance-enhancing drugs should lose points under a scale to be drawn up similar to the one that governs on-field indiscretions, with suspensions to match.

Obviously previous offences would have to be taken into account when deciding the severity of each suspension, with serial offenders banished from the game altogether.

That’s what Cousins is facing if he slips up. And he won’t be under any illusions about that if and when he crosses the white line.

Fair enough. But he shouldn’t be Robinson Crusoe.

When master trainer Bart Cummings won his twelfth Melbourne Cup on Tuesday, it was 58 years since he first led in the winner of the race. Cummings was the strapper of Comic Court, trained by his father Jim, and arguably one of the best horses ever to win the Cup.

His time for the Flemington two miles in 1950, 3 minutes 19.5 seconds, set a record that was equalled twice, but not bettered for 17 years.

Comic Court’s greatness was such that, first-up after a post-Cup spell, he ran another track record time, this time over the six furlongs sprint journey of the William Reid Stakes at Moonee Valley.

There was another champion going around at the time, too, kicking bags of goals for Essendon.

John Coleman, arguably the greatest of all full-forwards, kicked his biggest tally, 120 goals, including four in the grand final, that season to help the Bombers to their second successive premiership.

This year’s premiers, Hawthorn, won the wooden spoon. Very convincingly. Played 18, lost 18.

But there was no draft, and certainly no priority picks, in those days, and it took the Hawks seven years to work their way into the finals for the first time since joining the VFL in 1925, and four more years after that to win their first premiership.

Their rise from second-last in 2004, third-last in ’05 and 11th in ’06 to the top this year shows how much difference the draft, and intelligent use of it, can make.

Hawthorn’s youth policy under coach Alastair Clarkson, and what turned out to be a masterful departure from it with the recruitment of Stuart Dew, poses the question of whether Melbourne and West Coast will have similar success in the next few years, bearing in mind the massive concessions being offered to the expansion teams and consequent dilution of the talent pool available to the existing ones.
So the draft later this month will be massively important for the struggling teams.

Because of a number of factors, notably body strength and the pace at which the game is played, the odds are against drafted players being ready-made senior footballers who will play more than half their first season at the top level.

For whatever reason, possibly including injuries, only four of the top 10 from last year’s national draft managed it – No,1 pick Matthew Kreuzer (20 games with Carlton), seventh pick Rhys Palmer (20 with Fremantle), No.4 pick Cale Morton (Melbourne, 19), and second selection Trent Cotchin, (Richmond, 15).
Third pick Chris Masten played nine games with West Coast, and of the remaining five Jarrad Grant (Western Bulldogs, pick 5, didn’t get a game), David Myers (Essendon, pick 7, played 8), Lachie Henderson (Brisbane, 8, played 8), Ben McEvoy (St Kilda, 9, played 1) and Patrick Dangerfield (Adelaide, 10, played 2).

Factors other than football ability come into it, as I noted earlier this year about the lack of value Sydney got out of a number of top picks they had while languishing at the bottom of the ladder in the early and mid 90s. Homesickness can be a big problem for youngsters plucked from their families based hundreds, or even thousands, of kilometres, away from their families and friends.

That shouldn’t be too much of a problem for Melbourne if, as expected, they take Victorian forward Jack Watts with their first pick.

West Coast’s first choice is also likely to be a local, either ruckman Nick Naitanui or midfielder Daniel Rich.

But the situation will become more clouded when interstate clubs start choosing some of the other stars from the Victorian Metro side that had such a convincing win in the under-18 championship carnival final, the Victorian Country team and other states.

Where will Tyrone Vickery, Shaun McKernan, Michael Hurley, Mitchell Banner, David Zaharakis, Mitch Banner and goalkicking wizard Steele Sidebottom end up?

And would Sandgropers Stephen Hill, Michael Walters and Clancee Pearce be happy in Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne or Adelaide?

Tasmanian Mitch Robinson will be one sought-after player who won’t be too fussed over where he goes, though – he certainly can’t stay at home.

There is an urgent need for the AFL and the Tasmanian Government to work together and upgrade York Park in Launceston to hold at least 30,000 spectators, regardless of whether it continues to be Hawthorn’s part-time home or Tassie gets its own team.

Attendances at the Hawks’ games in the past two seasons, largely confined to fixtures against South Australian and West Australian teams that would have struggled to attract decent numbers in Melbourne, show that the market is there for bigger crowds at more attractive games.

The Hawks, surprisingly, have captured a consistently loyal Tasmanian following since St Kilda, which seemed the most logical team to do so, pulled the plug in 2006 after four years playing home games there.

The Saints developed a huge fan base in Tassie in the 1960s, when wily club secretary Ian Drake, himself a Tasmanian, attracted a “foreign legion” of Apple Islanders that was largely responsible for winning their only premiership in 1966.

Darrel Baldock, Ian Stewart, Verdun Howell, John Bingley and Bob Murray, who was born in Tasmania but never played there, were stars in that team, with Tasmanian fans hanging on their every move.

Howell was so popular in his native Launceston that he wrote a weekly column for The Examiner, which was quite an innovation for a regional newspaper in those days.

He was also one of the chief drawcards in the Victorian team (this was long before State of Origin) that played Tasmania at York Park in 1960 and went down in history by losing.

Back in those days, when black-and-white TV as just starting up in Tasmania, and for many years after the advent of colour, there was an outcry if the St Kilda game didn’t make it, at least in highlights form, on to Tasmanian screens.

But 40 years later, perhaps because many of those fans had gone to the great oval in the sky, St Kilda didn’t find playing home games in Tasmania to their liking as much as they had hoped, and pulled the plug after eight matches between 2003 and 2006.

The Saints averaged more than 17,000 fans at York Park only in the last of those years, when they attracted an average 17,108.

The figures for the other years were 16,704 in 2003, 16,615 in 2004, and 15,772 in 2005.

The Hawks’ averages in the two years since arriving at their sponsorship deal with the Tasmanian Government, under which they play four home games a year, have been 17,403 in 2007 and 17,528 this year.

Before then, Hawthorn had made 12 home-game appearances at York Park, making a total of 20 games between 2001 and 2008, with their best result 20,971 against Richmond in 2006, the record AFL turn-out at the venue and just about as many as can be crammed in.

The only other visiting Victorian teams have been the Western Bulldogs and North Melbourne (two games each) and Geelong (one).

The Hawks’ second-best crowd was the 19,929 at the Brisbane Lions’ only Tasmanian appearance (this year), and apart from those games the visitors have always been from South Australia and Western Australia.

St Kilda’s biggest crowd was 19,223 against Port Adelaide in 2004.

Both teams’ worst crowds were against Fremantle – Hawthorn’s 13,862 in 2006 and St Kilda’s 12,465 in 2005, the lowest crowd for any official AFL home-and-away fixture at York Park.

Fremantle was also involved in the two next-worst attendances, 14,554 in 2004, and 15,066 in 2002, both against Hawthorn, and the average crowd for the Dockers’ six appearances has been only 14,740, the worst of any visiting club against either the Saints or the Hawks.

The game the Tasmanian fans would really like to see, of course, because there is still a considerable amount of sentiment behind the Saints, is Hawthorn v St Kilda.

But that would probably attract at least 30,000 fans, well beyond York Park’s capacity, so it won’t happen in the foreseeable future, because it would be madness to spurn the larger crowds the two teams attract in Melbourne.

Hawthorn’s Tasmanian games, though, even against lesser teams, will become even more popular now that the Hawks have won the flag.

Which is why money needs to be spent on upgrading the Launceston ground’s facilities, with a new covered grandstand on the eastern wing the first priority.

One of the obstacles to be overcome will be, as always, the internecine squabbling that has gone on since time immemorial in Tasmanian football politics.

Too many of the game’s administrators believe that if it’s not in Hobart it doesn’t deserve to exist, and the Government and the AFL need to hit this on the head.

Hard.

York Park is not only the best football ground in Tasmania, it is also one of the best in the AFL, and much better located than Hobart for spectators from the state’s north-west coast, so forget all about Bellerive.

Now is the time to do the work on the upgrade, because a 30,000 to 40,000 capacity stadium will be a far more attractive proposition for the AFL when it finally realises the futility of its western Sydney pipedream and sends its 18th team where it rightfully belongs.

The really memorable grand finals, and this was one of them, all have their defining moments that end up in either triumph or heartbreak. Ray Gabelich’s 50-metre mad, bouncing run for the goal that nearly gave Collingwood a flag against Melbourne in 1964, only to have it snatched away at the death.

Barry Breen’s skew-whiff kick for the winning point when St Kilda pipped the Pies two years later.

The Paul Kelly pass that fell agonisingly short of Tony Lockett’s desperate lunge for it, 30 metres from goal and dead in front, with the Swans leading North Melbourne by nearly four goals midway through the second quarter in 1996.

The game’s whole momentum changed after the Shinboners swept that ball away and scored five goals to one in the rest of the term to take a confidence-boosting two-point lead into half-time and won going away.

There have been plenty more such cameos, lasting only a couple of minutes or a few seconds, that are talked about for years.

Saturday’s will probably be remembered as Dewy’s Deuce, and it took less than two and a half minutes near the end of the third quarter to join the list.

The 29-year-old Stuart Dew, officially listed at 102 kilograms, or just over 16 stone in the old measure but perhaps nearer Gabelich’s 17, galloped like a gazelle to score a goal with four and a half minutes left in the term, set up another for Mark Williams with a tick over three minutes to go, then scored his own second at the 2:06 mark to give Hawthorn a 30-point lead, the biggest of the match so far.

Geelong, after spending nearly two full quarters of football scoring two goals and 15 behinds (six of which were rushed by the Hawks’ defence) since Paul Chapman’s goal a minute into the second term, then rattled on an unlikely two goals in less than a minute, the second of which was the result of a massive umpiring blunder.

Darren Milburn scored with 38 seconds left until three-quarter-time. No argument about that one.

But then, from the centre bounce, Gary Ablett was crunched after handballing to Cameron Ling, standing almost alongside him near the middle of the ground, and Ling hoisted a long kick into the forward line.

“Downfield” was the call from an umpire – which should have meant a free kick to the player nearest where the ball went when Ablett disposed of it.

That was Ling. Instead, the free was paid where Ling’s kick landed, giving Steve Johnson a shot at goal from well inside 50 metres, and cutting the margin to only 17 points at the break.

But it didn’t matter. The Cats attacked strongly early in the last quarter, but came up with only four behinds, three rushed and one to Ablett, before goals by Buddy Franklin, Sam Mitchell and Rick Ladson pushed the lead out to 33 points. Game, set, match.

The downfield free clanger wasn’t the only one that prevented a bigger Hawthorn win, either. Ablett scored his first goal in the opening term when, after he marked and tried to play on with one of his trademark lightning-fast handballs, Chance Bateman laid a legitimate tackle and was harshly penalised 50 metres by an umpire whose eyes weren’t as quick as Ablett’s hands. Another 50 for dissent led to a sitter of a goal for Ablett.

Let’s not take anything away from Ablett, though. His brave, never-say-die performance was the work of a real champion, and stood out in a team that played well below expectations, with coach Mark Thompson going so far as to hint at a bit of selfishness by some players who deviated from the game plan.

Some pundits suggested Ablett should have won the Norm Smith Medal, which wasn’t an outrageous idea, by any stretch of the imagination. Others mentioned in dispatches, apart from the deserving winner, Luke Hodge, included the hard-working Brad Sewell.

Personally I would have given the award to Dew, described by some as the fattest man in football, a jibe that doesn’t matter when you’ve won a flag, just like fellow man-mountains Gabelich (1958) and North Melbourne’s Mick “The Galloping Gasometer” Nolan (1975). It was game-breaking stuff at a crucial time.

Dew, recruited by coach Alastair Clarkson against the wishes of some in the Hawks’ youth-at-all costs hierarchy, went one better than Gabelich and Nolan by winning his second premiership medal in his only two grand final appearances, the first of which was with Port Adelaide in 2004.

“I think my best footy’s ahead of me,” he said ominously on Saturday night, although admitting that might be for only two more years.

And what of Shane Crawford, who joined the Hawks the year after they won their previous flag in 1991 and had to wait 17 long years to taste what he spruiked on the victory dais as his “that’s what I’m talkin’ abaht” success. He played like a man whose time had come and he wasn’t going to let it get away from him.

David Parkin, who knows about these things, reckons now is the right time for Crawford to bow to the inevitability of time and go out on the biggest high of all. He’s right.

But perhaps the day’s most prescient observation came in a typically witty throwaway line from Channel Seven commentator Denis Cometti: “It’s desperate out there – Dew on the ground,” he quipped after a player interchange on the bone-dry oval, not in hindsight in the third quarter, but during the furious-paced first.

Yes, Dew was on the ground all right – and the Cats will never forget how he sent them skidding to defeat.

When the Doggies run on to the MCG on Friday night for their semi-final against Sydney, it’ll be just under 19,711 days since they last won a premiership, on the afternoon of Saturday, September 25, 1954.

Sorry, the premiership – their last one was also their first, with the second still to come, 83 years after Footscray joined the VFL.

If you don’t believe me, have a look at the online home of Footscray Not Western Bulldogs, who want their team to revert to its old name, pointing out among other arguments that North Melbourne picked up an extra 12,000 members after switching back from being called the Kangaroos.

FNWB also remind visitors to the site that it will be almost 17,156 days (you’ll find it specifies down to the second) since the club last played in a grand final, and nearly 3,646 days since the red, white and blue last graced the MCG for a preliminary final.

They also call other clubs by the names they might have if all were subjected to the same treatment as themselves – Hawthorn are the “Eastern Hawks”, Essendon the “Northern Bombers”, North Melbourne the “Universal Kangaroos” – you get the drift.

They stop short – just – of demanding a return to the Western/Whitten Oval and having the Hyde Street school brass band murder the club song before the game and during the intervals.

Given the way the other Westies are performing from their base just down the road past Avalon, it seems unlikely that either of the first two droughts mentioned above will be broken this year.

But Rodney Eade and his boys will give the third one a red-hot shake as they take on the Swans in a finals match at the G for only the second time in the two clubs’ history.

The Scrag’ems, in their first year under their new name, won a qualifying final by 35 points against Sydney in 1997, then lost the preliminary final by a heartbreaking two points to Adelaide, who ironically went on to win their first flag. The Bulldogs fell, much more heavily, at the second-last hurdle again in 1998, when their Croweater conquerors again went on to win the premiership.

Apart from 1997, the only other time the Dogs and the Swans have met in a finals match was in 1942, when South Melbourne won by 27 points in a game played at Princes Park because the MCG was being used by the army during the Second World War.

It will be a pity to see either side lose on Friday night, in a way, in a clash in which the up-and-coming Bulldogs are facing a much more experienced outfit that belied its advanced age by finishing all over the top of North Melbourne last Saturday night.

I must confess I was one of those sitting in front of the fire sipping some of Paul Roos’s hot chicken soup, not so much through choice but because an emailed request several weeks ago to one of the AFL’s media chiefs for accreditation to cover any Sydney finals for The Roar went unanswered.

Incidentally, viewers north of the Murray were dudded last Friday night when the game between Hawthorn and the Western Bulldogs wasn’t televised live on Fox Sports.

The AFL website clearly says its broadcast agreement “provides Fox Sports with the exclusive right to broadcast Friday night matches live into NSW and Queensland (Fox Sports Plus on the Main Event Channel)” because of the free-to-air rights holders’ other commitments (Channel Seven delayed the game for an hour).

And after treating prospective customers like that, the AFL is still insisting Sydney needs a second team, even though it managed to draw fewer than 20,000 people to a showcase game last Saturday night.

To make matters worse the Channel Ten half-hour-delayed telecast of that game attracted a paltry average of only 185,000 viewers, possibly due in part to some of the AFL’s promotional ads going to air several hours after the game had finished.

Swans chairman Richard Colless, who until now has been admirably restrained about the subject of a second Sydney team, is understandably starting to take the gloves off.

Among other things he pointed out at the weekend that the AFL’s 150 years of football advertising campaign, painting the game as the centre of the Australian universe, had gone down like a lead balloon north of the Murray, and made the not very startling observation that “there’s not an insatiable appetite for AFL in Sydney”.

The Main Event Channel gave me this reply in response to a query about the non-appearance of the Friday night game: “We have been advised by the AFL/Fox Sports that they don’t require our channel to show any of this weekend’s finals, we are on standby for the following weekend.”

It seems, though, that NSW and Queensland viewers will be denied their 518 fix again this week.

At the time of writing the AFL website listed Friday night game as live on Channel Seven from 7pm and the Saturday night match live on Ten from 7.30.

We’ll just have to put up with the commercials, won’t we?

It’s time for people power to come to Richmond. The cheer squad, members and fans need to put their hands up to ensure Terry Wallace gets the same sort of fair go that kept Paul Roos in the job at the end of his successful 2002 stint as caretaker coach after Rodney Eade’s departure from the Swans.

Roos’s appointment cost Wallace the Swans job and sentenced him to a couple of years in the media wilderness until he took over at Punt Road in 2005.

Any fair-minded observer would have to agree that 2008 – year four of Wallace’s five-year plan – has been a successful one for the Tigers.

To get the side up the ladder from stone-cold motherless last to only half a game outside the top eight has been a terrific achievement by Wallace and his coaching staff.

It would have been even better, with finals football on the agenda this weekend, if the players had performed maybe 10 per cent better in three or four games they either lost or drew – but then, you can say that about just about any team that narrowly misses out on achieving a goal.

The pluses are there in abundance – Trent Cotchin, Mitch Morton, Jack Riewoldt and Will Thursfield, to name a few, have shown that they will be forces to be reckoned with in the next few years.

The strengthening of the side - through careful blending of outstanding young talent with experienced players who are finally seeing some reward for their efforts in the lean times - should have club officials reaching for the cheque book to re-sign Wallace for another two or three years after his contract expires at the end of next season.

But instead, the club president, Gary March (Gary who?), has gone on public record as saying the team’s effort this year is worthy of only a five out of 10 rating, and there are mutterings that the board could be trying to find a way to get a new coach a year early.

Fans would be entitled to think that, after all the upheaval of recent years, including the hamfisted handling of Danny Frawley’s departure, the people running Richmond would be sitting back with smiles on their faces and looking forward with much anticipation to the next few seasons – a premiership in, say, 2011 or 2012 would be a distinct possibility if this group keeps up its present trend.

Gun West Coast midfielder Daniel Kerr as a recruit for 2009, if there was any substance to such a move, would reinforce this view, although West Coast are adamant Kerr will stay put for the final year of his contract, and if he did move he’d be wise to join former teammate Chris Judd at Carlton rather than chance his arm as a pawn in a president v coach power struggle.

Wallace has said he’ll never coach anywhere else, but who could blame him for revising that thinking if he doesn’t get the support he needs where he is?

It’s understandable that Wallace doesn’t want to go through the whole process of rebuilding a struggling team again, but he might consider overtures from the AFL and the new Gold Coast club to help out in some kind of overseeing role in the lead-up to the team’s introduction.

Barring Wallace being sacked, though, there won’t be too many jobs around in the next few years unless the new hierarchy at Melbourne suddenly decides Dean Bailey isn’t the man for the rebuilding job, which seems unlikely. Most other coaches’ jobs look secure for the foreseeable future.

West Coast, rebuilding under John Worsfold, will need to find another assistant after releasing Michael Voss to take over from Leigh Matthews, but that’s about all that will be available in the west - Mark Harvey will be given longer to turn Fremantle around.

So any other budding coaches will have to content themselves with looking forward at least another year, when Sydney and Collingwood are likely to be looking for replacements for Roos and Mick Malthouse.

I don’t think either of those two will stay on beyond the end of next season, and Malthouse could even give it away after this finals series, although the quality of his younger brigade should tempt him into one more year.

It’s possible there could be one more vacancy at the end of next year if Port Adelaide have another season as bad as this one, which could result in the club and Mark Williams parting company.

Meanwhile, we have some unexpected match-ups in this weekend’s finals games as a result of the turn-ups in round 22, in which Collingwood and North Melbourne were the biggest losers, followed by St Kilda.

The Saints have extended Robert Harvey’s career by a week, as they’ll get a second chance after losing to Geelong instead of going out first-up, but the belting they’ll cop will make them easy meat for the Crows or Magpies.

The Bulldogs should just beat Hawthorn, although it’s a real toss-up; and the home ground advantage should get Sydney and Adelaide over the line against North Melbourne and Collingwood.

Last week’s tips: 6 right, making 114/176 overall.

The pickle the Sydney Swans have found themselves in after an appalling second half to their season should be setting the alarm bells ringing loud, clear and often at AFL headquarters as the boffins there persist in their push for a second team in Sydney.

The Swans have lost seven of their last nine games and find themselves certain to play in the finals mainly through the misfortunes of a draw by the Tigers and a stupid one-point loss by Brisbane.

With an ageing list there seems nowhere for Sydney to go but down – but that’s one place they simply can’t afford to go.

If the Swans followed what would be a sensible path for any other team in the competition, except possibly the Lions, they would swing the chopper, get the best kids they can at this year’s draft, cop a season or two of hammerings and then grab the pick of the crop when it’s their turn to take the cream of the young talent.

But there are a couple of compelling reasons they can’t do this, one of which is often overlooked.
Cast your minds back to when the Swans did get first go at the best of the best available young talent, and look what they ultimately got out of it, which basically was four-fifths of five-eighths of you-know-what.

Sydney got No.1 pick Darren Gaspar in the 1993 draft, and Anthony Rocca and Shannon Grant at Nos. 1 and 2 in 1994.

Gaspar played 21 games with the Swans in two seasons before moving to Richmond and playing 200-plus games there. Rocca played 22 games in two seasons, then became a 200-gamer at Collingwood.

Grant was cajoled into staying three seasons in Sydney, where he clocked up 58 games before going to North Melbourne, and will make it 300 career games when he turns out for the
Shinboners against Port Adelaide this weekend.

All three were reluctant to go to Sydney in the first place, and left for similar reasons, mostly family-related.

The Swans put in a lot of time and effort on developing all three into well above average players, but never got the benefit of their full potential, although Grant did play in their losing grand final side in 1996.

The Swans’ eventual premiership breakthrough in 2005 could arguably have come a fair few years earlier had these three played five or six more seasons at the level their later deeds proved they could clearly reach.

Their trips through the revolving door have no doubt taught the Swans a valuable lesson – better to sign a No.21 or 31 who wants to prove he should have been higher up the list than a No.1 whose heart isn’t in it, so dropping to the bottom to get a top draft pick won’t guarantee future success.
The other, more obvious, reason the Swans can’t afford to take the plunge is the Sydney entertainment market.

The Sydney club’s average home attendance in 1994, the year after Ron Barassi engineered an end to their 26-game losing streak, was 9,814 – up about 400 over the depths of 1993.
In 1997, the year after their grand final appearance, the Swans were drawing an average 35,818 to the SCG (that was before the “blockbuster” games at the then non-existent Homebush stadium boosted their figures considerably).

Even with the inflated figures since the big-drawing games were moved to Homebush, that 1997 figure hasn’t been surpassed – the average in 2006, the year after the premiership win, was 34,259, when membership reached a record 30,382, and last year, with 28,764 members, a drop of 5.6 per cent, the attendance figure was 35,632.

But - and don’t have any illusions about this - the memberships and attendances could easily drop by 20,000 if the Swans aren’t seen by the people who put their bums on the seats to be competitive (translation for the Mexicans: top six at least).

On top of all this, a second Sydney team? Madness.

So the reality facing the Swans is that they have to find about half a dozen more players like Darren Jolly, Ted Richards and Henry Playfair, whose present clubs find superfluous to their needs but who still have plenty of good football left in them.

Fremantle defender Roger Hayden might be a good one to run the pencil over. His performance against Richmond last weekend went a long way to preventing a shellacking.

Hayden’s marking in that game reminded me a lot of Kevin “Bulldog” Murray, Ian “The Rat” Bryant and Don Gale, father of Brendon and Michael and one of the best Tasmanian footballers never to play in the VFL/AFL.

All three of those former state representative back pocket players could take a good grab overhead (so could The Rat’s boxer dog, by the way), as well as read the play to a tee, and if Hayden could move east and stay injury-free I reckon he’d give a team like Sydney some pretty good service.

Adelaide’s Nathan van Berlo, one of the most underrated players in the comp, would be another pretty handy recruit, but I doubt the Crows would let him go - unless, of course, they could get a proven goalkicking forward, perhaps with the initials BH, in return.

This week the Shinboners should clinch a well-earned fourth place, with wins by Collingwood, the Saints and the Swans pushing the over-achieving Adelaide down to eighth.

With only two rounds left before the finals, the last five places in the eight are still giving mathematicians nightmares. Can Adelaide finish fourth? Can Richmond still sneak into the finals? Well, yes, if, and maybe.

But these are just two of the many questions and answers being thrown around as we watch what is, apart from the one outstanding team at the top, developing into one of the keenest battles we’ve seen for years to decide who finishes where.

Second and third places are, of course, already decided, too, but the Hawks and the Western Bulldogs showed by losing to teams outside the top eight last weekend that they will be vulnerable come finals time to sides hitting their best form at the right time.

As well as the top three, some pundits were declaring the whole eight ’set in stone’ midway through the season.

But now there are plenty of permutations, with Sydney, who looked home and hosed for fourth spot a few weeks ago, in real danger of dropping right out of the eight, and Richmond, despite their shocker against Adelaide in round 19, still a remote chance of playing finals if they win their last two and other results go their way.

St Kilda aren’t safely in the eight yet, either, even though their two remaining games are at the Telstra Dome, where I think they will win both and it would be a real shock if they lost more than one.

If they do lose to both Adelaide and Essendon, and Richmond beat both Fremantle and Melbourne, which I expect they will, the Tigers would slip two points ahead of the Saints.

If the Saints win one, the Tigers would then have to rely on Sydney losing twice by massive margins to tip the Swans out on percentage.

That’s another doubtful scenario, even allowing for the Swans’ abysmal recent form.

I think Sydney will lose to Collingwood this week, but should get up in the last game against Brisbane with the advantage of playing at the SCG, which is a big factor in a crunch situation, as Essendon found to their cost in 1996.

But don’t write the Lions off, either.

After their surprise win over the Bulldogs last week, they should be able to beat Carlton at the Gabba on Saturday night, and then, coming off two straight wins, wouldn’t be any pushovers with a finals berth at stake.

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Adelaide should stay in the eight even if they lose against both the Saints and the Bulldogs, which is what I have budgeted for – but the Crows have certainly stopped the rot since I figured they would win only one, not at least four, of their last six, and fourth spot is certainly not beyond them.

But North Melbourne, the present incumbents in fourth place, are a big chance to stay there, as they look the likely winners over Port Adelaide, the season’s worst-performed team when compared with 2007, in the last game.

Before that the Kangaroos will play the parts of the mice as the Cats give their faithful a final home-ground look at their superb skills, which will leave North hungry for redemption, as well as the double chance.

But things are so tight that Sydney and St Kilda, as well as the Crows and Kangaroos, are still in the hunt for fourth. It could all come down to percentages.

If Geelong, as expected, win their two remaining games they will match Essendon’s feat of 84 premiership points, with only one loss for the season, in 2000.

If all the remaining selections I made before round 17 were to get up, the final ladder, with games won out of the final six in parentheses, would be:

Geelong (6 wins) 84 points
Hawthorn (4) 68
Western Bulldogs (3) 66
North Melbourne (5) 54
Collingwood (4) 52
St Kilda (4) 52
Sydney (2) 50
Adelaide (4) 48
——
Richmond (4) 46
Brisbane (2) 44
Carlton (2) 36
Essendon (2) 32
Port Adelaide (1) 24
Fremantle (2) 20
West Coast (2) 16
Melbourne (1) 12