Tough question, but I think maybe yes - just because there is enough data to suggest something wasn't right about our approach to finals - they regularly feature as some of our lowest scoring games.
Conversely, when underdogs in finals we really didn't win many at all - you'd expect a few.
It is true that being the 3rd/4th best team leads to a somewhat unfair and unflattering finals record, just by the nature of the system. But the fact remains we had enough goes at it, and even when underdogs in Prelims etc - we should have a better overall return.
A statistical view:
Looking at our Prelim results since 2012 (L, L, L, L, W, L) or even our QF results (L, L, W, L, L, L). Applying Maximum Likelihood estimation based on these results would give us an average expected odds, of winning any one of those individual games, of $6.
Six Dollars! We were never that much of an underdog going in.
I can't remember what the markets were at the time but I doubt we ever reached the juicy highs of $6 for any one game, let alone on average. I'd be surprised if any one of those games saw us start higher than $4 to be honest. I mean just recently against Melbourne, most people thought we were considerable underdogs - but we were still only about as high as $3 pre game.
So yes, we may have been 3rd or 4th best over the journey but we have statistically massively underperformed, no two ways about it. In my mind, when it comes to finals, we haven't had it in us to win one against the odds. Brisbane in 2020 probably the only exception.
