Some of the older posters may want to confirm this for me, but if I am not mistaken during our 97-98 GFs I thought I remembered hearing how the Victorians would try and disrupt the hotels where the Crows stayed at and also sabotaged the training grounds with broken glass etc.
Makes you appreciate how challenging it was for those teams to have won on GF day.
I do remember reading how the changing rooms for the Crows in the 90s in Victoria were of really poor standard too.
It's a miracle we have 1 premiership, let alone 2.
Thankfully, we were on the cutting edge re fitness, had a genius coach, our opposition weren't MCG tenants despite having Vic advantage (they were higher ranked so fair enough), the pro Vic media hadn't reached such saturation point and I don't believe umpiring was as dubious then as now.
Then you look at Port's flag gained against an interstate side full of injuries who had unfairly travelled the week before, with a squad including start up concessions and draft tampering gains.
The system is unfairly stacked when you need to be so much better than certain opposition just to break even.