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Interestingly such a parallel universe exists - English soccer. There was a time when the winners of the H&A championship in the lower divisions were automatically promoted to the division above and the wooden spooners of the higher division relegated. The soccer authorities abandoned this for a play-off (finals) series to determine promotion/relegation.

Minor point as well re your analogy - the FA Cup and the English League are run by completely different bodies. A truer analogy would be if the AFL had a H&A style champion and the SANFL had been running in parallel a hundred year old knockout competition involving every senior club in the country. Yes, the two would be separately celebrated and yes, amalgamating them to give a finals series championship for the AFL would make no sense. However, this is not the case in Australia.