by Jim05 » Tue May 20, 2014 9:19 pm
The team the Swans played, Eastlake, has been a complete on-field basket case this season, having said that Sydney regularly belt the old Canberra sides by over 100pts so it wouldn't matter even if they weren't a basket-case. Even last season when Brisbane won the premiership most QAFL sides were generally competitive with them, to at worst losing by 10 goals. The NEAFL is a weird league in any case, they amalgamated the north and south divisions into one 14 team competition ditching 5 teams in the process...the press release stated this was aimed at strengthening the competition but due to politics I presume, they only allowed 3 spots for old QAFL teams so Morningside who finished top 4 in the northern league were booted - 4 of the 5 boots came from the northern division, Broadbeach could've stuck around to give an even amount of teams as they won 7 games, the other 3 boots all only won 1 game each so those were perfectly valid, particularly the Canberra boot, Tuggeranong, who was flayed by over 200pts last season by the Swans.
So in this political hybrid, you have a 14 team "league" that has scrapped its divisions on paper but kept them at the same time...oh and where nobody plays every team. They can't have a true league because the Canberra sides need to play each other so they're not regularly belted off the park and the reserves teams need to play each other regularly to best provide a competitive game for their sides each week. So, each team plays 19 games, but with the exception of NT Thunder which is competitive enough to be given defacto AFL reserve side status, no non-AFL reserve side will have to play an AFL reserve side from its opposite division. Extending that to the inevitable absurd conclusion and in a 14 team league, Brisbane & Gold Coast play 19 games but only against 7 teams...so they don't play half the league. On the flip side, whilst they're parroting best competition each week, they failed to take into consideration that one of the AFL reserves sides could be a basket-case (Gold Coast who haven't won a game) so the Swans get to bully Gold Coast 3 times this season but won't play Southport, Redland or Aspley (2 of which are in the top 4) at all who would be vastly more competitive than Gold Coast or any of the Canberra sides.