The Sydney Swans and the West Coast Eagles have given AFL an epic quality that it hasn’t seen since the Hawthorn-Geelong era. Meanwhile, AFL’s Melbournebased press stands by and laments the dominance of “interstate” clubs. Let’s not underestimate the Swans’ achievement in making the ’06 grand final and almost snatching victory from the hard-running Eagles. In ’06, the game underwent such immense change by small degrees that it emerged a vastly different prospect compared to ’05. For the Swans to adapt to the new, perpetual-motion version after revelling in the gnawing spectacles they were able to create the previous year, and come within a point of doing it all again, was truly awe-inspiring. Teams are afforded very small portals of possibility these days, and when those snap shut, the next chance might not come around again for a couple of decades. Everyone believed the Swans’ opportunity had come and gone. Their depth and flexibility, and the resourcefulness of their coach, Paul Roos, have been greatly misjudged. Other teams gave up the ghost around April, when they realised they were playing the wrong game.

Last year, we mentioned the ninja deathtouch that was Kerry Packer’s exorbitant bid for the AFL TV rights – he died believing that the Seven-Ten consortium would be unable to cut the mustard if they dared to match it. Foxtel was giving no guarantees that it would help them meet their goal of eight televised matches a week, including live broadcasts into Brisbane and Sydney every Friday and Saturday night. Why should it? It’s 25 per cent owned by Packer’s PBL. The first symptoms have already emerged. Foxtel hedged its bets as long as possible, giving the impression that someone was enjoying the scheduling pandemonium over at Seven and Ten, before finally accepting an agreement to televise four matches a week (at press time, anyway). The problems faced by the AFL-Seven-Ten configuration are the very ones everyone identified last year, so there’s no point rehashing them. Politics will melt away when another glorious season of the great game resumes, the old broadcaster takes the reins and stirring string music and super-slo-mo images combine to convince us that we’re about to witness something unspeakably grand. Enmities will only bubble to the surface when the odd difficulty is encountered regarding the draw, Seven’s ability to extend itself and conflicting scheduling between Seven and Ten – but that’s for someone else to discuss.

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