My favourite stand-up bit of all time is one of Louis CK’s, the bit is called “Of course…But maybe”.
He can explain the joke better than I can. The 4 minutes is worth it.
Told you it was worth it.
I’m going to try and palely imitate one of the best comedians ever with three “Of course…But maybe” thoughts that I’ve had about the AFL season through 20 rounds.
Let it be known that I don’t 100% believe these things, but I don’t 0% believe them either.
This is angel and devil footy commentary, don’t take it literally.
Except the third one which I absolutely believe.
Of course, Collingwood effectively swapping Jack Ginnivan out and Lachie Schultz was a mistake. But maybe Collingwood was never that good in the first place.
Collingwood betting on Hawthorn being bad and Collingwood being good, and therefore trading Lachie Schultz for what the Pies thought would be a pick at the back end of the first round and swapping Jack Ginnivan for a pick the Pies assumed would be at the top of the second, was not a good trade.
Hawthorn are terrific, Collingwood are mediocre, and all of a sudden Jack Ginnivan is the best instigator since Worm in Rounders.
It was a bad trade, no doubt.
But Collingwood was the worst premier since the 2016 Bulldogs and were never going back-to-back anyway.
I wrote it before last year’s Grand Final.
I was right then and I’m right now.
The Pies weren’t that good last year.
Footy was in a good place for parity and a bad place for excellence.
Swapping out a small forward with X-factor for a grinding pressure small forward was never going to stop everyone else from catching up with and zooming past the oldest list in football.
Of course, AFL teams want to be good all season. But maybe trying in the first two months of the season doesn’t matter at all.
Despite what the football commentariat – myself included – told us about Brisbane being cooked, Essendon being top-4, Sydney being unbeatable, and the Bulldogs needing to sack their coach things have changed dramatically in the AFL from weeks 8-20.
After Round 8, Melbourne was fourth, Essendon fifth, the Bulldogs eleventh, and Brisbane 13th.
Now those teams are 11th, 10th, eighth, and second, respectively.
Maybe as the season has extended to 24 rounds and 23 games, the first two months of the season are mess around and try stuff out rounds.
Like Bill Belichick always said of the NFL season – it starts after Thanksgiving.
Maybe footy is heading that way.
It’s like that thing where you’re supposed to skip season one of Seinfeld because the show was still finding its feet.
By season two, the show has Elaine and we’re cooking.
Just get through the early stuff and come home strong.
Sydney, for instance, did the opposite and burst out of the blocks winning 7/8 playing fast and frenetic footy.
But now they’ve lost four of their last five and every team is effectively playing them the same way and winning (except the Bulldogs who looked them in the eye and Globo gym’d them).
If Brisbane can be 13th after round eight and second after round 20 – not to mention the betting favourite to win the whole thing – maybe the first two months of the season are the time to dust off the cobwebs before really starting to try later in the season.
Of course, the salary cap is a good thing. But maybe parity is boring.
Picture it.
You live in Melbourne.
The sun is poking through the clouds for the first time since March.
You’ve just had the Friday before the game off.
You’re going to your mates’ house to watch the Grand Final with a few beers.
Your whole last six months has built to this moment.
Who’s playing?
Fremantle v Port Adelaide?
What? Who cares?
The reaction in Melbourne to that Grand Final would be like a rat pissing on cotton.
That Grand Final is like the gnocchi scene in The Godfather III – mostly weird and uncomfortable, but also bad and boring.
Maybe it would be better if the rich clubs could just spend their money to get better players so Collingwood or West Coast or some big team could be in the Grand Final all the time.
At least there’d be some buzz about the place instead of having to get super excited about which Fremantle player is going to make the game even less watchable by tagging Zac Butters out of it.
And then maybe if a small club like GWS accidentally fumbled their way to a premiership it would be even more special.
Maybe, just maybe, it’s better to have a Leicester City winning the Premier League moment once every 80 years than living in a system where that moment is impossible because parity measures are designed to socialise the competition.
I guess what I’m saying is maybe parity is bad and it would be better if the big teams were good all the time because they spend the most money.
It would at least mean we can basically set our watch to getting pumped about Grand Finals instead of having to watch Charlie Dixon loaf around on the last Saturday in September.