A week late

Last week I was going to write about how special it would be if St Kilda went through the whole season without losing a game. I ran out of time, and then on the weekend they got beaten by Essendon.

If the Saints go on to win the premiership this year, they will be the 7th different team in the last 7 years to win a premiership (dating back to Brisbane’s premiership in 2003). It shows that the salary cap and draft have created the kind of equality that the AFL intended. Only 9 clubs won premierships in the 37 years up to 2003. In contrast, we could quite possibly get to 9 different premiership winning clubs in 9 years, if 4 of the currently strong teams, St. Kilda Collingwood Adelaide and the Bulldogs, win the next 3 premierships.

So, it appears to me that even though the increased number of clubs means that it is mathematically harder to win any given premiership, the equalisation mechanisms mean that clubs are more likely than ever, over a given period, to get their turn at being premiers.

There will obviously be exceptions. Some teams will manage to win more than a single premiership in relatively short period (Geelong may yet do that this year) and, some teams will continue to have ‘premiership droughts’, although that is already becoming more exceptional, given the recent premiership wins by the Swans and Cats (and probably the Saints this year). Even so, in this environment of flags getting shared around, winning a single premiership will be somewhat diminished, historically speaking.

Getting back to the Saints and the blog I was going to write last week…St. Kilda would have had a special place in historical folklore if they could have won every game they played on the way to a premiership. After they beat the Hawks in Tasmania whilst resting a large number of players, I thought they were going to do it. Then they played the Bombers.

The consensus in the ‘footy world’ seems to be that it doesn’t matter that they lost a game. Apparently it doesn’t matter at all, because a premiership is the ONLY thing of any consequence. I think that is rubbish. It has to matter, at least a little bit, that the Saints lost an opportunity to stand out amongst all the other premiership winners.