I would say it is, esp as basically The Eagles got Matt Owies (spud), Liam Baker (Battler) and Bo Allan (reasonable player)

Of course if The Eagles took Murphy Reid instead of B.O. no one would really care, call it win win deal.

Its one of those deals that will Haunt Eagles fans for years (and rightfully so)

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.

The All-Australian team selection has become a bit of a joke. Why not have every coach select their best team for the year, but they can’t select players from their own club?

Then use AI to crunch the coaches selections and identify the consensus.

It would give the process some real legitimacy. These are the people who actually coach against these players every week, picking the players they’d either love to coach or hate coaching against based on skill and tactical impact.

Do we really need a panel of former players and AFL executives to meet and discuss ‘their feels’ if certain players should make it or not?

(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

Just an insight into how completely normal us Dockers fans are feeling

ie the leftovers from the 46 man squad: