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After three rounds of this season I’m reminded of the words of one of the founders of the original Aboriginal Tent Embassy, Michael Anderson, who said: “People are going to wake up in this country and say what the hell is going on?”
I won’t spend time going through the various contortions this season has already thrown up, apart from Essendon beat Melbourne who beat Greater Western Sydney who beat Geelong who beat Hawthorn who beat the Western Bulldogs, and, also, are Hawthorn – a sequence that makes less sense than the one in The Human Centipede part 3.
Worth adding that the Demons gave North, who are paying $12 to win the flag, a hell of a time in Tassie, and could prove a handful for any side that doesn’t take them seriously in the future. But lost to Essendon. I know I said that once already but it really does warrant a second mention.
Suffice to say there is a degree of unpredictability this season hitherto unknown. Yes, our glorious game has long been unpredictable – it is full of great stories of rising from the ashes, and miraculous comebacks, and falls from grace – but this season already looks special.
The point of the draft is/has been to iron out any medium and long-term chasms between teams, reduce the incidence of blow-outs, make premiership races exciting for the supporters of more than two or three teams. (The draw is also influenced by a desire to avoid excessive routs, though primarily by a desire to sell TV advertising.)
This season has already demonstrated that momentary lapses in concentration, for want of an expression simultaneously more precise and more comprehensive, against ostensibly inferior sides can be very costly. The margin between teams has tightened, for the most point, to reach a situation in which a bad ten minutes can produce a bad day.
This is especially true with the free-wheeling style of play increasingly in vogue, producing score lines such as:
133 v 100,
166 v 102,
126 v 100,
119 v 90,
128 v 92, and
136 v 131.
But, the past few seasons have thrown up a few contradictory indicators as to whether or not the AFL’s long-term socialist agenda has been successful, or indeed ever existed.
The Hawks certainly don’t fit the egalitarian narrative.
Hawthorn has won the past three premierships and looks a strong prospect for a fourth consecutive flag, an exceedingly rare feat in VFL/AFL history. More so, the 2013, ’14, ’15 flags came after a 2012 grand final appearance and a premiership in 2008. A remarkably fruitful period.
2014 and 15 were lopsided wins, underlining the Hawks’ supremacy.
Geelong also gives weight to football Social Darwinism, with the 2007, ’09, ’11 senior flags, a 2008 grand final, and 2002, ’07, ’12 VFL premierships. Last year was the first season in which Joel Selwood, then a veteran of 204 games, didn’t play finals in his entire career – and, more remarkably, only the third time in his career that his side didn’t make the preliminary finals.
In the past twenty seasons, fourteen clubs have made the grand final. This sounds healthy enough on the surface.
In the fourteen seasons since the end of the 2001 season, nine clubs have made it.
And ten of those fourteen premierships have been won by just three clubs.
Occupy Wall Street would be outraged.
Brisbane may be a special case. After the Bears devoured Fitzroy, the league poured so many concessions and bonuses into the merged entity that they’d clearly forgot the phrase ‘national competition’ included the word competition.
The Cats and the Hawks are a different kettle of fish and built their own dynasties without the radical welfare statism applied to the Lions.
Even without pump priming, victory does beget victory. Club cultures grow stronger, and players – especially with the advent of free agency – are attracted by the sweet smell of success.
But this season – this season – the pack is becoming tighter. Yes Hawthorn aren’t at full power yet, and yes Essendon will struggle, but so far the one thing we know about the season is that it is already an enigma.
Two weeks ago I wrote off 12 teams after Round 1 in what some suggested was a somewhat rash claim. I was probably wrong about Gold Coast. In fact, outside of Hawthorn and the Bulldogs, the race for the rest of the top four is wildly wide open – arguably more so than any season in recent times – let alone the top eight.
And once you make the top four you have a fair crack at it. Make it to the big day and anything could happen. Karl Marx’s vision of a professional football league without classes is within reach.
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