There’s something evolving within the AFL competition at present. It’s not a crisis. It’s an intrigue. It’s not fully declared. But it is a trend.

For the obsession with the bottom feeders the real story is at the top end.

There have always been poor teams. Destitute. Dire. Helpless. Hopeless. Some went through seasons without ever registering a victory. Port Adelaide’s plight, while alarming, is hardly unique.

The success rate of the best though is unprecedented.

On Saturday Geelong became the first team in history to win 17 home and away matches in five consecutive seasons. There are all manner of subsets through these years that might stand as records for generations.

But it’s when you combine the performance of the top two teams that you identify the stranglehold the best are exercising over the competition.

The current format of 22 games per team commenced in 1970 with only the shorter 1993 season excluded from the sample.

The catchment is 40 years. During that period on average the teams filling the first two ladder positions in home-and-away football shared 34 wins.

Collingwood and Carlton posted that mark in 1970 and 1981.

The stereotypical dominating duo would be Essendon and Hawthorn from 1983-85. But they finished top two in only the middle season and accumulated 35 wins.

The out marker was 2000 when Essendon went within an ace of the perfect season. Its 21 wins were complimented by 16 from Carlton.

On four of the five occasions between 2003 and 2007 the top two shared in 33 wins.

Since then the graph has steepled. Geelong and Hawthorn split 38 wins in 2008. Geelong and St Kilda repeated the feat a year later. This season Collingwood and Geelong are tracking for a 40-win haul.

This is winning the likes of which the VFL/AFL has never known. Historical evidence proves it isn’t cyclical. It’s a whole new stream. The repetition makes it more than an anomaly.

Why is the prescient and premature question. For now there can only be theories.

Are the weak weaker and thus wins easier to come by? If that were true then equalisation is failing.

The most sensible explanation of that topic came from Bulldog champion Chris Grant: “Coaches are now making earlier decisions on experienced players than they ever have before. So young players are playing at AFL level when they’re just not ready.

“Not having big bodies on the field against the best teams in the competition totally exposes their limited ability. So the gap is huge out on the paddock right now.”

Perhaps the age of professionalism has levelled out fluctuation in performance. Excellence is established. Excellence is demanded. Excellence is delivered.

This would support the diminishing number of upsets. But sport around the world has trod the path to professionalism.

Yet in October 2010 the NFL website carried an analytical column which began: “Every week, teams take to the field operating under the premise that on any given Sunday anything is possible, but the growing parity in the NFL is making the mantra a reality. Just take a look at the scores, and it is apparent that the margin between the haves and have-nots is narrowing.”

In 1980 top of the ladder Richmond peeled off 11 straight wins before heading to the Junction Oval and inexplicably lost to the last-placed Fitzroy.

It’s unfathomable to entertain the Power beating the Magpies given the 138-point differential last week.

In four seasons Geelong has lost only once to a team that has missed the eight - presuming Essendon holds eighth - being Adelaide last year.

Is it the advances in sports science? Given Geelong has had three different partners in the domination that couldn’t be the stand-alone explanation.

Nor could you mount an argument that these clubs have somehow unlocked the mysteries that have eluded other leading teams for decades.

It seems more plausible that the tectonic plates of the AFL have shifted and the strong are inheriting the earth. Even in a mandated socialist structure life finds a way.

Gerard Whateley leads the Grandstand AFL team on ABC Radio