This is the time of the year when the unfairness of the AFL draw really starts to kick in.

And this season it is set to play a bigger role than ever in shaping the eventual make-up of the final eight.

With just four games separating the teams from second to 12th on the ladder, there is everything to play for with five rounds remaining and the only certainties right now are that Geelong will be involved in the September action and Carlton, Richmond and Melbourne won't be.

But the Blues, Tigers and Demons are still going to have a significant say in which teams take part in the finals and which don't in 2007.

That is because the teams that get to play them twice are virtually assured of extra premiership points compared to the teams that don't.

The three strugglers between them have won just eight games for the season and you have to go back to 1993 - when Brisbane, Richmond and Sydney won just nine games between them - for a year when there were three teams as uncompetitive as the Blues, Dees and Tigers are right now.

And it is Collingwood and to a lesser extent Essendon, which are the big winners from the AFL's unfair draw in the crucial run home to this year's finals series.

The Magpies play all three strugglers over the next three weeks and right at a time when they are starting to look vulnerable, following their 93-point loss to Brisbane this weekend.

But instead the Magpies get the chance to regain their confidence and momentum by the luck of the draw, against three teams for whom the season can't end soon enough.

The Bombers, who find themselves in the eight by percentage only, also have the luxury of playing Carlton and Richmond in the run home.

Compare the draw of the Magpies and the Bombers to those of two other finals contenders in Hawthorn and the Bulldogs and just how unfair the AFL draw really is becomes apparent.

The Hawks might be one place ahead of the Pies on the ladder at the moment but they have little chance of finishing above them given that while the Pies face the competition's three easybeats in the run home, every single remaining match for the Hawks is against a fellow finals contender while the Dogs face four of their fellow finals contenders in the run home.

Now none of this was known when the AFL released this year's fixture and there are always going to be imbalances in a competition where 16 teams and 22 rounds does not allow the luxury of every team playing each other twice.

While a 30 round season is impractical, the AFL could create a fairer draw by splitting the competition into two groups of eight for fixturing purposes - with each club playing all the teams from their own group twice and the eight teams in the other group once in a 22 round season before switching over for the following season.

That would ensure that over two years nearly all teams had played each other the same number of times - thus creating a fairer draw.

But because certain matches such as Adelaide-Port, West Coast-Fremantle and Collingwood-Essendon are always scheduled twice every season for financial reasons, this won't happen.

And as a result the draw will always work to the advantage of some teams at the expense of others but right now Hawks and Dogs fans in particular have reason to feel hard done by as they fight it out with the Magpies and the Bombers for finals berths.