Gerard

To me, it would make 1997 the centenary of it.

They did jump the gun.

As Patrick Smith wrote at the time, the calendar is proof that this is not the AFL centenary.

It is 100 years of football, but not a centenary, not by any accepted definition bar that of the commission.

The centenary falls in 1997, not now.

So why are we having a party a year before all logic says we should?

The cynical among us could suggest it is linked more to the departure of Ross Oakley.

Ross Oakley was the boss of the AFL.

There was a solid feeling that this would be his last year.

And then there was a conspiracy theory that the whole centenary was built around the fact that he wanted to be there when the centenary happens.

Ross has always denied this and, um, well, we can only go on.

What Ross says is that we wanted to celebrate many events that were the hundredth of their kind.

That's what he wrote in his autobiography.

It should be said, when we do the borrowed rewatchables, who won the movie, Patrick Smith wins the centenary.

Oh.

His writing throughout 1996 is peak, and he just terrorized the league.

And he takes us through the whole year as we're going to go through it.

And I want to say, first up-

The league, everything that happened in this year that's to celebrate the centenary, if it was today, I reckon 10% of it would have happened because we all would have been as critical as Patrick Smith.

The whole public would have ridiculed most of this stuff.