All the long six months and 22 home and away matches does is to eliminate eight teams and to establish a ranking order for the eight finalists.
In a nutshell, when the home-and-away season was completed, St Kilda and Geelong looked the clear top two, the Bulldogs, Collingwood and the Crows were hot on their heels and Brisbane, Carlton and Essendon were not realistic premiership threats.
With 44 players, an oval-shape ball prone to erratic bounces and umpires with normal human fallibilities, the predictability script rarely comes to fruition – not so this September.
In the six finals games played so far, the highest ranked team has ended up winning and the bigger the difference in position on the ladder, the bigger the winning margin.
The pattern was set in week one.
Adelaide (fifth) thrashed Essendon (eighth), Geelong (second) beat the Bulldogs (third) by a couple of goals, Brisbane (sixth) narrow winners over Carlton (seven) and St Kilda (first) comfortable over Collingwood (fourth).
The semi finals followed the same pre-finals thinking.
The Bulldogs proved much too good for Brisbane and as expected, after many ebbs and flows after four quarters, the Collingwood and Adelaide game was decided by the last scoring shot of the match.
To this point, teams have been eliminated in ladder order.
The rankings earned over 22 weeks have not yet been altered by a finals upset.
The upshot: the Crows have ended their 2009 campaign with the confident knowledge that despite not finishing in the top four, they can more than match it with those who have.
Apart from the long established stars – McLeod, Edwards, Goodwin, Rutten, Burton etc, they have a large group of new generations in their early 20s who have become really valuable players.
This list is headed by Kurt Tippett.
Unbelievable agility and ground-level second efforts from a 200cm guy who can mark strongly overhead at full stretch – he's a fantastic asset.
Add Vince, Dangerfield, Hentschel, Knights, Mackay, Otten, Porplyzia, van Berlo etc and the result is a very good team with a bright future.
The Brisbane Lions have pushed up from 10th to sixth, which gives a large improvement tick.
Their loss to the Bulldogs highlighted the areas that need to be remedied for a further climb up the ladder.
The Lions have a great captain and power forward in Jonathan Brown and a very good one in Daniel Bradshaw. Both had excellent seasons but the Lions are unhealthily dependant on these two to kick the majority of their score.
They are desperate for small-medium goalkickers.
The Lions work rate and tackling pressure was exceptional all year, which made them very hard to play well against.
The emergence of Daniel Rich and Mitch Clark as two top-liners was an enormous bonus.
Brisbane Lions had six first or second year players in their 22 last Friday night.
They all struggled to have an impact, but the experience will be invaluable for the future.
