The Race to 17

[ItsAllAboutMe]

Essendon & Carlton have been stuck on 16 premierships for 30 & 25 years, and the Collingwood joined them on 16 in 2023..

Carlton & Essendon look in no man's land and the Pies appear to be heading for a huge cliff, who will be the first club to 17 premierships... and could it be Hawthorn currently sitting on 13.

 

[kid_a]

GC Suns

 

[Colonial]

VFL counting is laughable.

I don’t count Balmains premierships as NRL premierships.

 

[RUNVS]

Essendon & Carlton have been stuck on 16 premierships for 20 & 15 years, and the Collingwood joined them on 16 in 2023..

Carlton & Essendon look in no man's land and the Pies appear to be heading for a huge cliff, who will be the first club to 17 premierships... and could it be Hawthorn currently sitting on 13.

Premierships before 1990 should not count. I mean most the premierships you are listing here happened when the VFL was only an amateur competition.

 

[Bagger72]

VFL counting is laughable.

I don’t count Balmains premierships as NRL premierships.

Why? Without the VFL you wouldn't exist.

 

[RUNVS]

Why? Without the VFL you wouldn't exist.

It is a very different competition now, and importantly most of the premierships these clubs won happened in an era where most of the players had full time jobs, rocked up to training once or twice a week after work and then played a game on the weekends. That era can't be counted the same as the modern professional era.

 

[RUNVS]

Hawthorn — 5 (1991, 2008, 2013, 2014, 2015).
Brisbane Lions — 5 (2001, 2002, 2003, 2024, 2025).
Geelong Cats — 4 (2007, 2009, 2011, 2022).
West Coast Eagles — 4 (1992, 1994, 2006, 2018).
Collingwood — 3 (1990, 2010, 2023).
Richmond — 3 (2017, 2019, 2020).
Adelaide Crows — 2 (1997, 1998).
Essendon — 2 (1993, 2000).
North Melbourne — 2 (1996, 1999).
Sydney Swans — 2 (2005, 2012).
Melbourne — 1 (2021).
Port Adelaide — 1 (2004).
Western Bulldogs — 1 (2016).
Carlton — 1 (1995).
St Kilda — 0.
Fremantle — 0.
GWS Giants — 0.
Gold Coast Suns — 0.

So the race to 17 is quite some time away. I suspect none of us will be alive when it happens.

 

[Bagger72]

It is a very different competition now, and importantly most of the premierships these clubs won happened in an era where most of the players had full time jobs, rocked up to training once or twice a week after work and then played a game on the weekends. That era can't be counted the same as the modern professional era.

The only thing that has changed - youth development was the clubs responsibility under 16s, under 19s and Magoos.

Better players were developed then.

 

[Plugger35]

Is this thread from 2015? Carlton and Essendon have been stuck on 16 premierships for 30 and 25 years, not 20 and 15 years.

 

[RUNVS]

The only thing that has changed - youth development was the clubs responsibility under 16s, under 19s and Magoos.

Better players were developed then.

You make an excellent point about it being a pre-draft era too, and we know the zoning back then was not exactly fair. Plus the talent pool was a lot smaller back then as even in just Victoria the population has gone from around 4 million in 1980 to over 7 million now.

 

[ItsAllAboutMe]

Is this thread from 2015? Carlton and Essendon have been stuck on 16 premierships for 30 and 25 years, not 20 and 15 years.

Sorry had a brain fart and didnt calc it properly.

 

[Bagger72]

You make an excellent point about it being a pre-draft era too, and we know the zoning back then was not exactly fair. Plus the talent pool was a lot smaller back then as even in just Victoria the population has gone from around 4 million in 1980 to over 7 million now.

Not exactly fair - so whats changed ? Saint Kilda havent won a flag since 1966, Bulldogs have won one. Fremantle got in one grand final in 30 years.

Maybe the narratives really isnt all that to be fair

 

[ItsAllAboutMe]

You make an excellent point about it being a pre-draft era too, and we know the zoning back then was not exactly fair. Plus the talent pool was a lot smaller back then as even in just Victoria the population has gone from around 4 million in 1980 to over 7 million now.

You could argue this model produced a more even competition than the draft era,

Take the 60s - 7 separate teams won the premiership from 1960 - 1969 & 7 separate teams won the premiership from 1990-1999.

 

[kid_a]

We have a VFL comp that is alive and kicking now, if clubs want to count ancient VFL flags well allow them to do so but in the actual VFL comp that is around

 

[Bagger72]

We have a VFL comp that is alive and kicking now, if clubs want to count ancient VFL flags well allow them to do so but in the actual VFL comp that is around

Its actually quite amazing seeing West Coast fans quite content with how things are for them. With the support you guys have you could lean into that deep support and rebuild for finals in 2-3 years instead of 10.. we are in year five and counting for you guys.

 

[RUNVS]

Its actually quite amazing seeing West Coast fans quite content with how things are for them. With the support you guys have you could lean into that deep support and rebuild for finals in 2-3 years instead of 10.. we are in year five and counting for you guys.

 

[Chief]

Restart the count every time a new club is added!

 

[bungalow_bill]

Premierships before 1990 should not count. I mean most the premierships you are listing here happened when the VFL was only an amateur competition.

The race to 6 is what we should be discussing. Hawks & Lions on 5 and the Cats/Eagles just behind on 4 each. Lions look to be in the box seat but the Hawks are a decent chance. Cats a small chance.

 

[NetworkNerd]

Restart the count every time a new club is added!

Richmond - 3 (2017,2019-2020)
Hawthorn - 3 (2013-2015)
Brisbane - 2 (2024-2025)
Collingwood - 1 (2023)
Geelong - 1 (2022)
Melbourne - 1 (2021)
West Coast - 1 (2018)
Bulldogs - 1 (2016)
Sydney - 1 (2012)

 

[Bagger72]

The race to 6 is what we should be discussing. Hawks & Lions on 5 and the Cats/Eagles just behind on 4 each. Lions look to be in the box seat but the Hawks are a decent chance. Cats a small chance.

Getting so many AFL handouts makes the premiership null and void.

 

[Colonial]

Why? Without the VFL you wouldn't exist.

Changes nothing to what I’ve said.

 

[Bagger72]

Changes nothing to what I’ve said.

So silly welfare queens. The premiership count needs to be reset when Tasmania comes into the competition so it can be fair for you.

Fact of the matter is - the sport is Australian but the competition came from Victoria.

 

[SC_Power]

So silly welfare queens. The premiership count needs to be reset when Tasmania comes into the competition so it can be fair for you.

Fact of the matter is - the sport is Australian but the competition came from Victoria.

As are almost all your flags.

 

[Bagger72]

As are almost all your flags.

Yeah - because we had to beat Collingwood, Richmond, Essendon, Hawthorn and Geelong to get them.

 

[The Airing of Grievances]

It is a very different competition now, and importantly most of the premierships these clubs won happened in an era where most of the players had full time jobs, rocked up to training once or twice a week after work and then played a game on the weekends. That era can't be counted the same as the modern professional era.

The problem with your argument is that the selection of a new "Year One" is entirely arbitary. You have chosen 1990 , which can be justified as being the year the name VFL was discarded and the new new moniker AFL adopted. But the reality is the game in 1990 was no different in any respect that from 1987-89 , when Brisbane and West Coast joined the 'old' VFL clubs .

If the criteria in counting premierships is that teams are made up of fully professional players rather than those who held jobs, do we then go back and find the year when the last player who had a non footy job played and count them from there. The fact is there was no one year when football became a fully professional game, there was a gradual evolution from every player also having a job , through a few fully professional players( probably late 1960s-early 70s) to most players being full time pros by the end of the 1970s
.
But I'm still not sure why it is considered that seasons played in an earlier era don't count because levels of professionalism were different then. It's just one of a numerous ways in which the game evolved, with different methods for determining the premier, different rules, different fixtures( and even now the fully professional era has the most distorted unfair fixturing arrangements the human imagination can come up with), different methods for allocation of players between clubs.
The one constant is that in each season of competition all clubs competed under the same set of arrangements
.
If being fully professional is the sole criterion of sporting excellence in competition, do we discount all Olympic Gold medals won in the amateur era, all Davis Cups won before 1968, all Test matches played before the Packer era? Do Bradmans scores have no meaning? Yes, we may qualify our estimation our rankings of the relative strength and weight of past achievements by considering changing contexts, but that's a different thing from pretending they don't exist.