Finals Series

It's been a few weeks since the Australian Football League crowned its premiers for 2014, which means I haven't needed to record the matches that air live either late at night or early in the morning, here on the east coast of the U.S. I've been recording them and watching them during the week to get my fix.

The AFL Twitter feed is dormant at times I usually check, so I never saw the final score before I watched. I still haven't really adopted a team to follow, and that is probably a good thing, since I typically follow underdogs, and underdogs typically lose. I kind of have a thing for Gold Coast, Fremantle, Port Adelaide, St. Kilda, and the GWS Giants. It's a long list and it's somewhat fluid. I just like watching the matches.

They also have a rather unique finals system, which is how they seed teams for the playoffs. They call it 'making the eight.' The sides are seeded according to their regular season record. 1 plays 4, and 2 plays 3. In the bottom half, 5 plays 8, and 6 plays 7. The top half features no elimination games in the first week. Winners there get a bye directly into the Preliminary Final round, and losers must play the winners of the bottom half of the eight in the Semi Final round. Losers in the 5/8 and 6/7 matches are eliminated. That is what happened to Richmond this season-- they won about their last nine games to squeak into the eight (beating Sydney, which is a good side) on the last day of the home and away season, only to get beat down by Port Adelaide. I guess they spent so much energy on qualifying that maybe they were spent. (1) Hawthorn beat (4) Geelong, and the Sydney Swans beat Fremantle. Bottom half: Port Adelaide beat Richmond and North Melbourne took down Essendon.

Anyhow, we're down to six sides. The two losers in the top half play the winners of the bottom half. Geelong lost their first match to Hawthorn and then lost their Semi Final match to an inspired North Melbourne side. In addition, Fremantle fell to Port Adelaide in this round by 22 points. So the Geelong Cats and the Fremantle Dockers are both done, and we're down to four sides remaining.

Hawthorn and Sydney both got byes into the Preliminary Final round, and both were winners. The Hawks beat Port by three points in a match that saw the Power rally at the end only to come up short by an eyelash. In the other game, Sydney gave it to North pretty good. It's the advantage of doing well in the regular season, to give yourself the chance to rest and only play two games to make the Grand Final, where a team from 5-8 would have to win three times just to make it.

Now all these playoff games were available on my cable system, but the Grand Final was not, and paying an extra $15 a month to watch one match just didn't seem worthwhile. This was a rare good decision on my part, since Hawthorn dominated the Sydney Swans to earn the premiership.

It is a back-to-back premiership and the 12th for Hawthorn since their entry into the league in 1925. They were one of the better sides when I used to watch a bit as a teenager, and they are pretty dominant nowadays too.

So no more AFL until the 2015 premiership season starts in mid-March. The trade window is still open, schedules will still be released, but we are still several months away from matches that count. I'll be waiting.