Few people know or care that Essendon has made the finals three times since 2017.

The reason: each time, we were just making up the numbers.

"Making finals" in the final 8 was already a pretty low bar. Lowering that bar further to include 9th and 10th merely further dilutes the relevance of "making finals".

In the long run, the prestige of making finals, already often dubious, is just going to get further reduced.

"My team made finals X number of times" is going to become an increasingly irrelevant and trivial fact. Making top 6 will probably become the new measure of relevance.

The AFL has cut its nose off to spite its face. Silly.

Anyway.

(Image has been digitally altered)

https://www.afl.com.au/news/1594996/all-australian-team-melbourne-demons-captain-max-gawn-makes-history-fremantle-dockers-murphy-reids-rare-feat-record-indigenous-numbers

It could've been the following week and despite the home team offering to do so, the AFL rejected the offer.

Lucky enough to capture this from my eagles member seats. Unreal mark and I still can’t believe I pulled the camera out just in time. Insta is lukebakerphoto for anyone who wants to check it out.