That is damning.
West Coast and Adelaide both had solid legs up in the 90s. Brisbane were hocked up when they dominated.
Sydney had COLA in 2012 which aided in player retention.
No one has done it. No one.
The interstate sides are still relatively young in the expanded VFL competition.
But there's already mountains of evidence that home ground is the biggest determinant.
Geelong almost never loses at KP, and sides look unrecognisably poor when they play there. If you go to the ground and observe from up in the stand, you note two things immediately - that it is not an oval, and does not look like any football ground you've seen someone try to play football on before.
You're watching a different brand of footy every week depending on which ground you're at, because teams have to figure out how to work within different dimensions while their opposition already has that down. Umpiring is reactionary, so you get a totally different ride depending on whose supporters are screeching that week. The turnaround in margin from home to away is regularly 10 or 15 goals.
Barely anyone wins in Geelong. Barely anyone wins in Adelaide. And not a single interstate team has won on the MCG on grand final day without list or salary cap concessions.
We're on a five year streak of non-vic teams "mysteriously" putting in absolute stinkers on grand final day. As much as it rubs Victorian nut sacks to think we've simply seen five consecutive inferior club environments exposed on the big day, that is a nonsensical impossibility.
For the game to become truly national and actually fair, the grand final MUST move. We don't need a 100,000 stadium. Bigger events all over the world regularly seat 50 or 60k. It's absolute nonsense that our other stadiums couldn't put on a phenomenal grand final.
It was so ******* disappointing spending all that money to go to a grand final, to see my team struggle with things that it could not address without practice in actual AFL games at that venue, while the other team has learned by playing on it way more at the elite level. To watch the umpires be swayed by the home crowd, and the teams themselves be affected by the home crowd. To see that it is just another away game, where we have to travel, and the opposition doesn't. Where we have to overcome what our opposition doesn't. My team can never bridge those disadvantages. They are systemic.
I think this is going to be the single biggest conversation in the game the next several years, because it is becoming more structurally obvious with every season. Having a sport where every ground is a completely different size and shape, and then having the grand final ALWAYS at one ground that half the competition plays at way more than the rest, with all the other advantages that come with playing at home - is broken.
EDIT: GRAPHIC OF TEAM RECORDS AT THE MCG SINCE 2007:
9/10 Victorian teams have better records than ALL non-Victorian teams at the MCG. Melbourne, with their horrendous past 10 years, are still better than 5/8, and level with Sydney. Think about that for a moment.
Discuss.
West Coast and Adelaide both had solid legs up in the 90s. Brisbane were hocked up when they dominated.
Sydney had COLA in 2012 which aided in player retention.
No one has done it. No one.
The interstate sides are still relatively young in the expanded VFL competition.
But there's already mountains of evidence that home ground is the biggest determinant.
Geelong almost never loses at KP, and sides look unrecognisably poor when they play there. If you go to the ground and observe from up in the stand, you note two things immediately - that it is not an oval, and does not look like any football ground you've seen someone try to play football on before.
You're watching a different brand of footy every week depending on which ground you're at, because teams have to figure out how to work within different dimensions while their opposition already has that down. Umpiring is reactionary, so you get a totally different ride depending on whose supporters are screeching that week. The turnaround in margin from home to away is regularly 10 or 15 goals.
Barely anyone wins in Geelong. Barely anyone wins in Adelaide. And not a single interstate team has won on the MCG on grand final day without list or salary cap concessions.
We're on a five year streak of non-vic teams "mysteriously" putting in absolute stinkers on grand final day. As much as it rubs Victorian nut sacks to think we've simply seen five consecutive inferior club environments exposed on the big day, that is a nonsensical impossibility.
For the game to become truly national and actually fair, the grand final MUST move. We don't need a 100,000 stadium. Bigger events all over the world regularly seat 50 or 60k. It's absolute nonsense that our other stadiums couldn't put on a phenomenal grand final.
It was so ******* disappointing spending all that money to go to a grand final, to see my team struggle with things that it could not address without practice in actual AFL games at that venue, while the other team has learned by playing on it way more at the elite level. To watch the umpires be swayed by the home crowd, and the teams themselves be affected by the home crowd. To see that it is just another away game, where we have to travel, and the opposition doesn't. Where we have to overcome what our opposition doesn't. My team can never bridge those disadvantages. They are systemic.
I think this is going to be the single biggest conversation in the game the next several years, because it is becoming more structurally obvious with every season. Having a sport where every ground is a completely different size and shape, and then having the grand final ALWAYS at one ground that half the competition plays at way more than the rest, with all the other advantages that come with playing at home - is broken.
EDIT: GRAPHIC OF TEAM RECORDS AT THE MCG SINCE 2007:
9/10 Victorian teams have better records than ALL non-Victorian teams at the MCG. Melbourne, with their horrendous past 10 years, are still better than 5/8, and level with Sydney. Think about that for a moment.
Discuss.
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