Let's stop pretending the pre-season doesn't matter

The media tells us so, the tv commentators try to play things down, the clubs certainly do and the coaches make no doubt about it. Even the fans do, particularly so when their teams are knocked out early. It seems everyone's in on the idea of insisting that winning the pre-season competition isn't a priority and that the sole purpose of the NAB Cup is getting crucial yards into their players in addition to seeing what their newest draftees are capable of prior to the commencement of the 'real stuff.'
However surely now that the Bulldogs and the Saints have come this far, and certainly considering these two sides battled out a fierce preliminary final only six months ago, and are sure to meet in meaningful encounters over the coming months, there's no way that both clubs won't be going all out to win this Saturday night. Just as much as they will be when they start their premiership campaigns a couple of weeks later.

Both St.Kilda and the Western Bulldogs are candidates for the most tortured professional sporting clubs in Australia. They harbour just two premierships between them with their only flags arriving in 1954 and 1966. Along with the Demons they are stranded with the longest premiership droughts in the league and in the case of the Saints and the Dogs are not only desperate to change this fact around, but are this season genuine contenders to do so. Winning the NAB cup this weekend would be ideal for either team.

Despite so many doomsayers, the pre-season competition, at least over the last twenty years, has given us a good indication of what might follow. In fact eight of the last twenty winners of the pre-season have either gone onto to win that year's premiership, contest that year's grand final or at least be alive come preliminary final weekend. Winning the pre-season cup was imperative for North Melbourne in '95 for the ensuing premierships they claimed in '96 and '99. The Saints won the pre-season tournament in '96 and a year later made their first 'real' grand final in 26 years when they started favourites and lost to the Crows. Port Adelaide won back to back pre-season tournaments in '01 and '02 before they were able to win their club's first ever flag in '04, while Geelong, (a club not so long ago with the same stigma as the Saints and Dogs) had to get the monkey off their back by winning the pre-season in '06 before they could take the AFL by storm and claim the real thing in '07 and '09.

Winning's a habit and standing atop a podium and being presented with a cup, albeit one that's given out in March, is something that's neither easy or something that should be taken for granted. Rather for clubs who don't have 15 or 16 premierships, clubs precisely like the Dogs and the Saints, and previously the Kangaroos and Geelong, the pre-season really should be seen as an apprenticeship that needs to be served before winning the real thing.