"Life’s not fair, is it." (I won’t quote The Lion King again for the whole article, I promise).
Anyway – footy’s not fair either, and the best thing we can do in some cases is to just get over it.
The Grand Final is always played in Melbourne, but not every team is from Melbourne.
If you want to think about fair, then obviously it’s not fair that Adelaide were the dominant side of 2017, but in the Grand Final they played the third-finishing Richmond at the Tigers’ fortress, 200 metres from where they train.
So yeah, that’s unfair.
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But maybe Adelaide only finished top, only made the Grand Final, and only looked like such a good side in 2017 because they’re from interstate.
Melbourne-based sides face many challenges which interstate sides don’t, and it seems from looking at seasons gone by that it’s easier to make the Grand Final from outside Victoria, and particularly, outside Melbourne.
Since 2009, Victorian sides won four finals and lost 17 when playing interstate. Meanwhile interstate sides won eight finals and lost 21 when playing in Victoria.
That is a winning percentage of 19.05% compared to 27.59%, or in other words, Victorian sides are almost a third less likely to win on the road than interstate sides are.
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An interstate side’s home ground advantage is a more powerful positive factor than the travel is a negative one. This is because home ground advantages are simply more influential outside Melbourne.
The MCG is Collingwood’s today, Richmond’s tomorrow. Marvel Stadium belongs to the Saints today and the Bombers tomorrow, and the clubs don’t get to make the stadiums feel like their own.
I’ve been to Geelong to see them thrash the Eagles three times in my life, and each time I felt like an outsider; I didn’t belong. This was their ground. Whereas I’ve gone to West Coast games at the MCG and Marvel since I was a kid, and it’s not the same at all.
SA sides share their ground, and so do WA sides, but two tenants is different to five, and the Dockers are far more used to playing at the MCG than Collingwood are playing at Optus Stadium.
This on-field benefit extends to Geelong in H&A games, but not in Finals, given they are rarely allowed to play finals at their home.
But off-field, it’s easier to run a football club anywhere outside Melbourne, which includes the Cats. It’s easier to attract free agents, it’s easier to win fans, sponsors, and foster a sense of unity and tribalism among fans.
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If a Melbourne-born player wants to leave a club to return home, nine clubs are in play. The race for signatures is so frenzied it’s comical.
The good players want good teams, so they can play finals, while the average players want lesser teams, where they will find opportunity. This makes rebuilding so difficult.
This player movement slant is an advantage for the big Melbourne teams, but not such an advantage that it keeps them on top of the ladder sustainably. Yet it is a big enough disadvantage to keep a club like Carlton (or until recently, Melbourne) down.
Out of town, things are so different.
Dayne Beams wanted to go home, so he went to Brisbane even though they finished 15th just before Beams requested the trade. There is marginal competition for signatures in two-team towns, but there is always talent available for both clubs to get a slice of the free agency cake.
You take Elliot Yeo, we’ll take Jesse Hogan. You take Tom Rockliff, we’ll take Bryce Gibbs.
Local boys to “return” to Geelong include Gary Rohan, Luke Dahlhaus, Lachie Henderson, Scott Selwood, and a couple of blokes called Patrick Dangerfield and Gary Ablett.
Geelong is a little city, but they cherry-pick basically the entire western half of the state.
Similarly, fans and sponsors are so much easier to win over when it’s a race between two and not a race between nine, and if you’re an interstate club, you are probably in a better position financially than many of your Melbournian rivals.
And now some numbers to wrap up with.
In the last 18 Grand Finals, there have been 15 teams from Melbourne, and 21 from elsewhere.
2010’s match-up of Collingwood and St Kilda was the only time when both teams have been from Melbourne since 2000, when the Bombers played the Demons.
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Mathematically in the 2019 landscape, every second Grand Finalist should be from Melbourne. For most of the century, it should have been even more common given the Giants and Suns either didn’t exist or were full of teenagers.
In a nutshell, most AFL teams were from Melbourne, but most teams making the Grand Final were not.
So the sob story that Grand Finals are harder for interstate sides to win as long as they’re in Melbourne wears thin from my perspective. Hardly - what Chris Scott has called - a "travesty".
Currently, Geelong are top of the ladder, and the Eagles are second. Collingwood sit unconvincingly in third, while in fourth position the Lions’ bandwagon is growing by the week.
Three of the remaining four clubs in the eight are from interstate.
So yes, of course the AFL isn’t fair; hakuna matata.
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