

The romance of the Western Bulldogs’ flag triumph distracted from what might be a considerable elephant in the room this finals series. Photo: GETTY IMAGES

Pre-finals bye the elephant in the AFL’s room

Last year’s AFL premiership was a story good enough to melt a football romantic’s heart. It was good enough also to overshadow what might have been a considerably-sized elephant in the room.

It’s another reason the people at AFL headquarters might be barracking hard for a Melbourne or St Kilda flag come the business end of the season a couple of months from now.

Because in 2017, if there’s no equivalent romance to the Western Bulldogs of last year, that elephant might well end up stomping all over something precious but too often overlooked, the integrity of the entire competition.

The ramifications of last year’s pre-finals weren’t exactly ignored, but they did get lost in the wash more than a little as the football world rejoiced in the Bulldogs reaching their first grand final for 55 years and winning their first flag for 62.

They played the best football when it mattered most. But something about the way the 2016 premiership was won still nags at me. And it’s the fact that, but for the bye, the Dogs would more than likely have been eliminated in week one of September.

They’d finished seventh on the ladder, albeit an impressive seventh with a record 15 wins. But what about had their elimination final against West Coast been played a week earlier, as it would have been in any other year?

It’s almost certain they would have been without four key players – Jack Macrae, Tom Liberatore, Easton Wood and Jordan Roughead – all of whom were able to get to the line against the Eagles with the benefits of an extra week off. Even the most one-eyed Dogs fans would concede their absence would have made an enormous difference to the result.

In that regard, the Bulldogs got lucky. They might also have been fortunate to go into a grand final against a side they’d beaten the past couple of times they’d met, and not the one (Geelong) which had beaten them 10 times in a row. And there’s evidence to suggest that had a bit to do with the bye as well.

Prior to last season, of the previous 18 preliminary finals, just one (Hawthorn in 2015) had been won by a team which hadn’t also won the qualifying final, had a week off, then took on a more-fatigued opponent.

Last year, both qualifying final winners were rolled, Geelong and GWS having by then, thanks to the pre-finals bye, played only one game in 27 and 28 days respectively, after for five months having played week in, week out.

Their price for winning their first finals was to lose momentum at the most critical part of the season, a major and most unwelcome break from routine. It cost Geelong, particularly, big time, the Cats jumped at the start of their preliminary final against Sydney conceding seven goals to nothing, the contest effectively over by quarter-time.

The Swans ended up grateful for having lost their qualifying final to the Giants, several of their players privately having expressed concerns about how they’d fare in the first final after the pre-finals bye, and relieved to at least have had a couple of consecutive games before they took on the Cats.

In the finish, slow out of the blocks with just one game in a month under their belts, Geelong’s record of eight straight wins going into the preliminary final, the best record of any of the four preliminary finalists, counted for zero. It shouldn’t have.

Top-four teams work for 22 games to acquire the chance to move straight into a preliminary final plus gain an edge over more-fatigued rivals by having a week off when their opponents don’t.

Not only has the post-round 23 bye removed that advantage, it has left the winners of the two qualifying finals at a distinct disadvantage come preliminary final weekend, having played just one game over a four-week period.

Sure, the Bulldogs became the first team under the current final eight system to win the flag from outside the top four, but was any predecessor’s failure to do so a bad thing? Isn’t getting that top-four advantage the very reason teams are busting a gut through 22 games between March and August?

And did the bottom half of the eight need the extra help anyway? Particularly given three of them (Adelaide, West Coast and the Dogs) had managed to win 15 or 16 games.

Indeed, recent history suggested that the capacities and quality of the top and bottom halves of the final eight had tightened considerably.

In 14 seasons of the current final eight system from 2000-13, just two of 56 preliminary finalists had got there from the bottom half of the eight. But even before last year, in the previous two seasons another three teams managed it. In 2015, Hawthorn was the first team in nearly a decade to win a premiership playing every week of a finals campaign.

Surely in 2017, a season universally acknowledged as the tightest of all time, those finishing between fifth and eighth are going to be even more capable of going all the way without an extra leg-up. And if they’re not? Well, they should have won more games to finish top four.

The best team of the season doesn’t always end up winning the premiership. But our current finals system has been consistent indeed in rewarding with significant advantages the sides that earned them over 23 rounds of hard slog.

Isn’t that the way it should be? But what’s the point in earning those rights when actually doing so then winning your first final effectively puts you at a disadvantage? To me, it’s a major compromise of the whole point of the home and away season, something that the finals should reflect, not come as some sort of post-season lucky dip.

You’re not hearing much about it now. But you can bet your life you will if those two qualifying final winners-turned preliminary final losers from last year becomes four from four this September.

Don’t say you haven’t been warned. And don’t tell me then that the integrity of the premiership hasn’t been devalued by a thoughtless stroke of an AFL pen.