The NAB Cup or the AFL’s excuse of a competition for blooding youngsters and testing the depths of the best teams in the pre-season has as usual shown a little of what is to come when the season proper tips off.
Early indications have revealed that the AFL’s long-term dream of making the national competition truly a sport encompassed by the entire country is well on the way to reality.
And it is also heartening to note the many Indigenous, and multi ethnic youth are increasingly drawn to the game. This has been another AFL priority, to make the game endemic to all Australians as they assimilate into the Aussie way of life.
It’s been a work in progress over many decades. The seed that was sown is finally beginning to bear fruit, much to the delight of sports-mad Australians who would wager on spider racing or anything that moves to make it a lucrative bet.
AFL is entrenched as Australia’s premier sport and the biggest crowd puller, despite the popularity of rugby league, rugby union and cricket.
Early signs show the emergence of teams such as Collingwood, GWS, Melbourne, and the Western Bulldogs in 2016. These teams have shown enough to suggest that their campaigns for the season proper is well on track.
The others, including three-time repeat champions, Hawthorn have been merely tinkering with their lists to ascertain their depth of reserve stocks as the long and challenging season unfolds.
Hawthorn will be chasing a fourth consecutive flag this season. It is already being dubbed by their loyal fans as ‘Fourthorn’ and if they do it they will equal Collingwood as only the second team in AFL/VFL history. Collingwood won four in a row between 1927 and 1930.
Fremantle, North Melbourne, Collingwood, West Coast, Geelong and perhaps Richmond and Western Bulldogs will do what they can to spoil the Hawks’ party.
Essendon will be the only team that will stand out once more for all the wrong reasons as the supplements scandal plagues them for a fourth consecutive season. They have been hit with one of the worst possible punishments in Australian history.
The ASADA, WADA investigation has resulted in Essendon’s best dozen players being banned for the season, leaving a skeleton force boosted by top-up players attempting to salvage some pride for this once respected club.
While not defending drugs in sport, the anti-drugs in sport agencies could have handled this matter more professionally and in a much shorter time frame, alleviating the unnecessary duress the players have had to undergo for so long. The AFL may have to shoulder some of the blame for their part in making the investigation more complex than it needed to be.
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