Almanac Footy: Tears and fears for two tiers?

TEARS AND FEARS FOR TWO TIERS?

 

It occurred to me during this lead up to the first week of the 2025 finals series, while contemplating a number of matters in the dimly lit study, (perhaps including, according to some, my navel) that the scores the members of my Tipping Competition achieved this year have been commendably high. This of course is of very little interest to the average member of the highly intelligent audience out there in Almanac-land, but I think it hints at something wider that has been a subject of discussion in recent seasons: how competitive has the AFL been lately?

 

For much of this year there has been a substantial gulf between the top and lower half clubs, there have been many blowouts and big margins in games, and aided by the vagaries of the Fixture there seemed to be a lengthy spell during the season where there wasn’t much interest being stirred up in the footy at all. There was even talk on occasions in June and July of how the NRL had out-maneuvered and out-marketed the AFL brainstormers. How could this be!

 

Some of these concerns were also present the year before last, in 2023, which led to the following thoughts being put down at the same stage of the season- in the week leading up to the first finals weekend. 2023 was also a season where it had been comparatively easy for football fans to pick winners, a season where there were a number of teams who were pretty terrible on occasions, along with an assortment of mediocre outfits which could not maintain any consistency.

 

It was a season where the better teams could comfortably rely on winning games more so than usual. In other words, a season characterised by a worrying lack of competitiveness, which could only lead us to suspect that the 2023 Premiership wasn’t really of the value that we usually associate with the prize. Rather than fans bellowing a full-throated ‘YESSS’ as the Cup was raised on the podium at the end of the GF, it was perhaps more of a slightly embarrassed ‘meh’ as supporters turned to the exits and wandered off to the train home, an empty thermos and foil food-wrap scraps in their TAA travel bag, later picking up a Chinese take-away perhaps, as they returned to contented domesticity.

 

It gave me no pleasure in saying it at the time, but measured on the levels of competitiveness and unpredictability 2023 was a bit of a dud. In future record books the winner of the year before last’s Grand Final perhaps should have an asterisk next to their name, a permanent reminder that the year wasn’t quite up to standard, indicating that, yeah, maybe they were an OK team but nowhere near what you’d expect as Premiers. That the 2023 flag was a bit of a cakewalk.

 

Cakewalk….cakewalk….this has just tweaked something in my consciousness. What is it…? It’ll come to me. But, let’s proceed. At that moment, the week before the commencement of the finals, Collingwood were Premiership favourites. And, based on results and form, deservedly so! (That is clearly not the case this year). Yet, it was such a letdown to see the Magpies win and not be appreciated as they might have been in a more competitive year, and to hear supporters of other clubs smirking behind their hands when mentioning the esteem in which the 2023 Premiership holder was held.

 

But these little embarrassments can happen, and have done so before to a variety of clubs. Off the top of my head I can think of a few examples where teams have won Premierships that later have had a hollow ring about them, where the achievement, for a variety of reasons, has been underwhelming and under some question.

 

2010, for instance, where Collingwood defeated St. Kilda in a replay after the previous week’s dramatic draw. Sadly, during the intervening seven days, ebola, Japanese encephalitis, hamstring tightness and some undiagnosed cases of dissociative identity disorder, so we’re not exactly sure how many players came down with it, were running rampant through the Saints’ camp and they struggled to field a team of blokes who could remain upright for more than a quarter or two in the replay. It was no contest.

 

In 1990 Collingwood defeated an Essendon team that had, like George Foreman in the famous ‘Rope-a-Dope’ heavyweight championship fight against Muhammed Ali in the mid 1970s, punched itself out, in this case during the notorious quarter time donnybrook. In Kinshasa in 1974 Foreman was looking good for much of the fight’s eight rounds before, exhausted, he was felled by Ali. Likewise the knackered Essendon brawlers could barely lift their leaden arms from their sides for the second, third and final quarters, so enthusiastically had they earlier set about thumping Gavin Brown. Eventually they were comfortably swept away.

 

The 1958 decider also comes to mind. This saw a Melbourne side, superior year after year through the second half of that decade, on the cusp of equaling Collingwood’s long standing record of four premierships in a row. But the Collingwood brains trust, as it was, had different ideas, and in the immortal words of Dennis Lillee, decided to “retaliate first”. With the MCG mud clogging their Blue Star boots, the Demons couldn’t deal with the uncompromising approach of Murray Weideman, future World Championship wrestler, and his Collingwood crew as they crashed and crunched their way to a monumental, and controversial upset.

 

And finally, in this list of haphazard thoughts regarding possibly unworthy premiership winners, 1953 saw Collingwood beat a faltering Geelong side that had won the previous two titles but had lost their hunger. But crucially not their hunger for wild rabbits, which, according to anecdotal recollection were so important in keeping the population of our second city from starvation in the post-World War Two years. The Cats’ players were skinny and emaciated specimens, worn out from chasing down the area’s main food source through the streets of Geelong, and were just pipped at the finish in the big one.

 

So, there’s a random selection of flag deciders over the last seventy years or so, going back a long way, where this kind of thing- the devaluing of a Premiership for a variety of reasons- can happen now and then. But happily not too often.

 

 

More from Reject Phil Here.

 

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