The Fox Footy Jury on whether this year’s premiership will have an asterisk
Asterisk vs. massive tick? It’s a hot topic of debate in relation to this year’s premiership, so we went to the Fox Footy Jury to get their take on where this year’s flag-winners will sit in the annals of AFL history.
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Brownlow medallist Patrick Dangerfield said this week that he believes this year’s flag win will be “very much legitimate”, while Collingwood coach Nathan Buckley has said that his team would “be happy to have an asterisk next to our name” if it meant a premiership.
But some pundits aren’t as convinced there won’t be a question mark over the COVID-19-affected flag.
We put the issue to this week’s Fox Footy jury to determine their verdict.
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DERMOTT BRERETON
Five-time premiership player at Hawthorn
It’s still a wait and see for me. If there is quite a few injuries, and a team gets through and they win a premiership and they’ve had injuries and somehow have scratched, clawed and crawled their way to a premiership on sheer guts and determination because their injury list has mounted from the fact that there is four-day turnarounds, five-day and six-day turnarounds on games, it’s going to take a physical toll. If that injury list mounts and they do scratch their way to a victory, it’ll be huge and an incredibly valiant premiership with so much kudos.
But if there is rampant injuries and every list is decimated and there are blokes out on the field in a Grand Final and in a premiership team who, for all intents and purposes we can look at and say ‘that guy’s not really in the best 18 of a premiership team … that guy really isn’t in the top 27 or 27 players picked of a top-four team’, we’ll look at it and say ‘right place, right time, they got a premiership, good luck to them … but it wasn’t one for the ages’. If we start selecting down to player 32 on the list or player number 35 in a Grand Final team, it’ll have an asterisk next to it that it wasn’t the most skilled or competitive Grand Final of our time.
CAMERON MOONEY
Three-time premiership player at Geelong and North Melbourne
It won’t have an asterisk next to it. I look at guys in the NBA — in 1999, Tim Duncan, the Spurs won one on a shortened season. They don’t have an asterisk. I reckon LeBron James won one at Miami and they had a shortened season — no one talks about that.
I think it will go the other way.
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As hard as hubs could be (if we have them), imagine being the team that actually wins it with all the distractions, with everything that has gone on, I reckon that is one for the ages.
It’ll be a massive win for any club that can actually get up and get this done. The hurdles are massive.
If you’re mature enough and mentally strong enough to go through this — and maybe even hubs if they’re needed — and come out the other side and win a premiership, then I think it’s going to be a massive tick on you as a person and the club itself.
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JORDAN LEWIS
Four-time premiership player at Hawthorn
I think with these things initially it feels weird and it might not necessarily feel right. But in 10 or 20 years when the question gets asked, ‘Who was the premiership team in 2020?’ it will just be off the tongue and no one will ever really think less of it. But certainly in the current circumstances I think everything is equal, so if you win the premiership this year you are fully deserving of winning a premiership this year. Because everything remains equal for every single team in the competition. It’s about which team can deal with it the best.
Originally published as The Fox Footy Jury on whether this year’s premiership will have an asterisk