Demons' current dominance must go the distance

I'm sure I'm not the only person whose instinctive response was: "Daylight".

Sure, we're only four games into the new season, but already the signs are ominous.

Melbourne is a game clear on top of the ladder, the only undefeated team having seemingly expended barely a sweat in doing so.

Challengers? Brisbane seems the most obvious right now, but the Lions fell again at the sizeable hurdle that Geelong's GMHBA Stadium presents, and have been handled with relative easy by the Demons in their past two meetings.

The Cats? Well, it's only five quarters ago, when they trailed a young Collingwood side by five goals, that another fresh round of Geelong obituaries was being prepared.

And the memory of their 83-point obliteration at the hands of Melbourne in last year's preliminary final isn't going to be easily forgotten.

The Western Bulldogs? Not while they can't hit the side of barn. Richmond? It's going to take a lot more than one good win to believe the Tigers are genuinely back in the hunt. And so on.

All the while, Melbourne just chugs along on seemingly no more than three of four cylinders.

The Demons' opening win over last year's beaten grand final opponent was full of merit, they strangled Port Adelaide to death last week, but two more victories against the hardly-leviathan forms of Gold Coast and Essendon were just so-so. Yet still enough.

AFL analyst David King this week backed that up with statistics to prove it was more than just mere observation, too.

Last season, Melbourne was ranked seventh with the football, and first, fifth and first without the ball, and in clearance and post-clearance respectively. Those equivalent rankings right now are 12th , fourth, 12th and first.

"Their defensive stuff is still incredibly strong, but it's not at the levels of last year," King said.

"Their defensive 50 is still the best the comp and their ability to win the ball back is still the best in the comp through that mid-zone between the arcs.

"Outside of that, they're a very average football team by their standards and by the competition's standards, so the scope for improvement at Melbourne is still greater than the scope for improvement at other clubs in this season, given the talent you've got and the system you've got.

"Right now, they're going at 70 per cent and they're clearly - clearly - better than any other team in the competition - so be very afraid."

All spot on. And reminiscent, perhaps, of the last time a team looked so far ahead of all its rivals. That was Richmond in 2018. And yes, there's a lesson here.

The Tigers finished the home and away season with an 18-4 record, two games clear of their nearest rival Collingwood, with whom they'd dispensed comfortably twice during the regular season.

All of which counted for nought on preliminary final night, when the Magpies, led by the imposing frame of Mason Cox up forward, turned on a blinder.

Collingwood slammed on five goals to one in the opening two quarters against the stunned Richmond.

The margin was 44 points by half-time, and it was as good as game over, the team clearly the best-performed and best-equipped of 2018 failing to even reach the grand final, which West Coast subsequently won in a thriller against the Pies.

The Tigers' costly stumble isn't even the most pointed example, simply the most recent. The most infamous would have to be Geelong of 2008, the Cats losing just one of 22 home and away games before stumbling again on grand final day against a hungry young Hawthorn side. Geelong had finished the regular season no fewer than four games clear of their nearest rival.

And that, dependant on whether you're top dog or one of the chasing pack, is both the curse or beauty of a finals system. Even the best form displayed on a metronomically-consistent basis over a good six-month period counts for nothing if the best team has just a couple of bad quarters when they can least afford them.

Alternately, it's clearly more possible now, given the evenness of the AFL competition, for a team to struggle at times through the six-month slog from March to August, but hit the perfect note in September. Western Bulldogs 2016, anyone?

It doesn't necessarily mean we're just twiddling our thumbs waiting for the next few months.

You do have to be in it (the eight) to win it, a task Melbourne would already be at unbackable odds to complete.

But the Demons' current dominance, to borrow a golfing analogy, is all "drive for show". No matter how superior they look to their opposition right now, it's the "putting for dough" bit down the track that will still determine whether that dominance ends up counting for anything.