At the Gabba last week Collingwood and Brisbane did not so much play a game of Australian Rules football as thumb their noses at those bemoaning the supposed decline of a once free-flowing and instinctively attacking game.

Before that encounter, a defence-obsessed, pressure-crazy, over-coached AFL was under the microscope; pilloried even by those who had previously fallen under the spell of the stats junkies and multi-sport sophisticates who eat "pressure acts" for breakfast.

Belatedly, the ex-players and wedding celebrants posing as commentators, who provide what supporters occasionally mistake for thoughtful analysis, had noticed a game once famed for its high scoring and spectacular one-on-one contests was more blocked up than the plug hole in Rapunzel's shower.

Jaidyn Stephenson's late goal capped off a thrilling win over Brisbane. ( AAP: Dan Peled )

And yet, miracle of miracles, improving Collingwood and youthful Brisbane had ping-ponged the ball between attack and defence, scoring 37 goals between them on a joyous Sunday evening.

In the context of modern AFL, this was like watching a football game decided 6-5. Perhaps not one between Barcelona and Real Madrid, but still, it was an uplifting and even defiant two hours in the midst of an increasingly dour season.

And so a week later Collingwood turned up to play Geelong at the MCG for a much-anticipated game before a typically depleted but still expectant Mothers' Day crowd of 44,000 — and what happened?

Did Geelong's Big Three midfielders Patrick Dangerfield, Joel Selwood and Gary Ablett put on a sublime clinic of attacking football? Did Collingwood's new free spirit inspire a thrilling counter attack despite the absence of injured skipper Scott Pendlebury?

Not a bit of it. Instead, in perfect conditions, on the game's grandest stage, the Magpies and Cats produced a display so putrid in its error-riddled mediocrity that those forced to sip tea with stone deaf nonagenarian matriarchs in deeply depressing retirement village recreation rooms instead of going to the footy could consider themselves the day's big winners.

Those pleading the case for the entertainment value of contemporary AFL might suggest the Cats-Magpies schlockbuster came less than 24 hours after Port Adelaide had pipped Adelaide in a breathtaking, relatively high-scoring (95-90) thriller at the Adelaide Oval; the winning goal scored by Steven Motlop who is now only rivalled in Power chairman David Koch's affections by the Sunrise Cash Cow.

Steven Motlop celebrates kicking his game-winning goal against the Crows. ( AAP: David Mariuz )

Or just 48 hours after the Sydney Swans had beaten Hawthorn at the MCG with two late goals in a game that provided entertainment in inverse proportion to the conditions — think mid-February in Helsinki but with a slightly colder wind chill factor.

Or as Richmond was beating North Melbourne by 10 points at the Docklands Stadium in a match where the Kangaroos showed that confident, wonderfully well-drilled and now free-wheeling Tigers are beatable — almost until the moment they did not beat them.

These games proved the AFL's entertainment value is not as deficient as the worst doomsayers suggest. But the Geelong-Collingwood eyesore provided an equally compelling demonstration of why so many games aren't what they could be.

Rather than scan the team sheets before this game, we should have considered the post-game comments of Collingwood coach Nathan Buckley after his team's seven point victory — yes, victory! — over the Brisbane Lions.

While fans of all teams revelled in the liberatingly free-scoring nature of that game, Buckley bemoaned a leaky defence and the goals conceded at stoppages and from turnovers.

"I can't say it was pleasant viewing from our perspective," he said.

Fast forward seven days and it was immediately evident the Magpies would not allow themselves to be "scored on", to borrow from the ugly modern vernacular, as they had been by the Lions.

Incisive attack was replaced by defensive chip kicks and sideways handballs, dash and dare gave way to stutter-stepping hesitancy, a high-possession game plan Buckley later justified by the need to counter Geelong's "defensive structures" and characteristically slow ball movement.

The result, however, was a game so ugly that, in medieval times, it would have been locked in a downstairs dungeon and never been allowed to see the light of day.

Gary Ablett occasionally lifted the game against Collinwood above the mediocre. ( AAP: Joe Castro )

While some nostalgic cameos by Geelong's prodigious son Gary Ablett occasionally lifted the spectacle beyond the bog ordinary and gave the Cats their deserved 21 point victory, this game was exhibit A in the case against modern AFL.

Collingwood could bemoan its misfortune. Two players including key forward Darcy Moore were injured by early in the third quarter and they did not get the rub of the men in green. Buckley might venture that his team's poor conversion (5.15) also contributed heavily to the margin, if not the final result.

But the real tale of this game — and many AFL games — was how a team that had played with attacking verve against a lowly but spirited opponent one week — and prevailed — chose to dwell on its defensive inadequacies rather than celebrate its attacking flare.

The game's lab rats and stats junkies won't see it that way, of course. Lucrative media livelihoods could be lost if the new orthodoxy extolling the might of defensive pressure and suffocating zones were successfully challenged.

But an afternoon wasted at the Geelong-Collingwood game brought to mind the thoughts of the game's greatest free thinker, two-time Adelaide premiership coach Malcolm Blight: If the opposition kicks 20 goals, just kick 21.