The longer Hawthorn and Geelong dominate the 2008 season the more of an indictment it is on the AFL that the two best teams in the competition do not meet until round 17 this season.
Forget next week's Victoria versus The Dream Team match - a match already looking set to be decimated by the usual withdrawals of big name players that ultimately resulted in the death of state of origin footy in the 1990's - it is Geelong versus Hawthorn that all footy fans want to see right now.
Both are unbeaten after seven rounds - the first time two teams have been unbeaten at this stage of the season since Carlton and Richmond in 1995 - with reigning premier Geelong now having won 26 of its past 27 matches.
And number one contenders Hawthorn are just coming off a 12 goal demolition of last year's preliminary finalists Collingwood in front of more than 76,000 fans at the MCG.
A Cats-Hawks clash right now would draw over 90,000 to the MCG - far more than will attend next week's exhibition game between the Vics' and a hotchpotch team made up of players from all other states that is a team in name only - but don't hold your breath on seeing the Cats and Hawks clash any time soon.
In fact by the time the two teams meet - for the only time in this year's home and away season - on Friday July 25 at the MCG in round 17 it will have been an extraordinary 460 days between meetings.
Or in football terms some 39 weeks!
So much for the AFL's fixturing priorities, which are supposedly to maximise crowds and maximise television ratings!
The two teams also met only once last year, way back in round four in a game played in Tasmania and it's not as if the Hawks have only just arrived as a force given they made the finals last season - before this year's fixture was released.
So basically Victorian footy fans have been denied seeing the state's two best teams play each other and this after waiting seven years for two local sides to again dominate the competition after Brisbane's three flags in a row from 2001-03 followed by Port's first flag in 2004 and then Sydney and West Coast's dominance of the 2005 and 2006 seasons.
And all this could have been avoided if the AFL had stuck to its usual fixture where all teams meet other at least once in the first 15 rounds and that teams who play in the first seven rounds of a season meet each other again in the last seven rounds.
Under that scenario the Hawks-Cats would have been guaranteed to have met at least twice - since that match in Tasmania last year - by the time they finally clash this year.
But instead of seeing the two best teams in the AFL clash at some stage before the end of July, footy fans are instead treated to the Hawks playing bottom club Melbourne twice in the first nine rounds while even struggling pair Essendon and Richmond will have played each other twice this season before the Cats and the Hawks finally do battle in the most eagerly awaited home and away since Essendon met Carlton in round 20, 2000.
The Bombers went into the match having