What time is it?

[PaulP]

Care to elaborate? I’m desperate for more footy discussion.

To be honest, there were a few that I was uncertain on, but tried to remove bias from....it killed me to rate the Scum as having a chance.

For me, there are two approaches one could take :

1. the approach you've taken, which I call the graduated scale approach, where you can look at the various criteria, lists, coaches etc., and tease out from this whether certain teams are ahead of others.

2. A simpler approach, where you essentially have 2 groups : 1. genuine premiership contenders, and 2. the rest.

I can see the merit in both, but to me, teams like Essendon are not really any closer to the next flag than we are. They are without doubt closer to playing finals than we are, but making up the numbers in the 8 is one thing - being a genuine flag chance is quite another. The leap required to go from 5-8 to 1-4 in the H/A is greater than going from, say 9-12 to 5-8. At least IMO.

And as an aside, I don't understand the consternation towards Richmond. They finished 3rd, missing top 2 by 2 points, with a higher % than the 2nd placed Geelong. They lost several games by single digit figures. A stray kick here or there and they would have finished 1st. They were absolutely in the mix, in the 2nd half of the season, and certainly in finals.