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- #26
The last 20 years aren't indicative of what's going to happen in the next 20 years. The main difference being that we know the league is expanding to 19 teams very soon and a 20th team won't be far behind because the AFL + broadcasters won't like the weekly byes. Moving forward with Tassie + Team20 in the league, we're far less likely have top 10 teams finishing the season with worse than 50% W-L records. It should go back to something similar to what we saw in the late 1990s / early 2000s in the 16 club era when the top 8 would qualify for finals and it almost always involved teams with 50% or better W-L records playing finals each year.
FWIW I think you'd have a decent point if the league wasn't expanding in the near future. Plus, we all know footy fans are going to tune in when these wildcard games take place and I personally like the idea of filling in the pre-finals bye with something significant as opposed to the retiree All Stars game we saw this year. Sure, it might throw up some funky situations in the next 1-2 years while we still have 18 teams, but beyond that I think it'll add an interesting dynamic to each September campaign and provides even more incentive to finish inside the top 6.
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