IT'S NOT often — well, never, actually — that you get the chance to say "all roads lead to Dubai" in the context of AFL football.
On Saturday, Collingwood and Adelaide will kick off this season's NAB Cup in a setting about as far removed from memories of a midwinter muddy suburban Melbourne oval as is humanly possible.
With Carlton and Fremantle having played an exhibition game in Pretoria last night, even those pre-season fixtures in Cairns or Darwin seem traditional, as, sadly, are the rounds of footballers and ex-footballers-behaving-badly stories.
For an image-conscious AFL, the Magpies-Crows clash can't come quickly enough. Nor can the inevitable rounds of pre-season speculation it will herald. Just as well. Because that speculation is tastier than usual in 2008.
If you can't be optimistic about your team's chances for the new season in February, you never will. But there seems even more reason in 2008 for most of last year's also-rans to have genuine hope about what's in store.
The information upon which that optimism is based is coming via good sources, too.
Kangaroos captain Adam Simpson, St Kilda star Nick Riewoldt and a couple of other club officials have all commented in the past week or two that their spies have noticed an unusually high standard of pre-season fitness and skill levels in opposing camps this summer.
That's not always the case this early — teams with different agendas prepare at varying paces. But last year's also-rans can sniff real opportunity this season — with good cause.
Take a glance at 2007's final standings. Last season's top four featured teams which finished 10th, 12th and 14th the previous year.
While Geelong's 119-point grand final win has left an indelible impression of dominance, don't forget the Cats only made it into the grand final by a kick from a fast-finishing Collingwood.
Perhaps those sorts of wild season-to-season form swings account for fairly bizarre odds for this year's wooden spoon, in which North Melbourne, a preliminary finalist, is paying $7.50, and Carlton, 15th, having won just four games, is $13.
There's some head-scratching premiership prices around, as well; Fremantle, which finished 11th and two games outside the eight, is somehow a joint second flag favourite at $10.
That seems a tad optimistic, but there are nonetheless pervasive arguments for a significant Dockers' rebound — the addition of more steel and experience in former Essendon defender Mark Johnson, the motivation of a drastically under-performed 2007 and, in Mark Harvey, the new-coach factor.
The "new master's voice" theory shouldn't be underestimated when it comes to the fortunes of Essendon and Melbourne this season, either. Like their charges, Matthew Knights and Dean Bailey have plenty to prove to an army of sceptics.
Bailey couldn't have a worse run with injuries than Melbourne had in 2007, has pivotal players in Aaron Davey and Russell Robertson ready to atone for disappointing seasons, and the knowledge that, with a similar sort of list, the last time the Demons had everyone up and running they were finalists.
For Knights and the Bombers, it's about a completely recast training philosophy, a fit Matthew Lloyd, and more than a handful of players such as Andrew Lovett, Leroy Jetta and Courtenay Dempsey — quick, skilful and having only scratched the surface of their significant talents.
It's little wonder that trio, having been promised more opportunity this season, have responded with pre-season training campaigns that has Windy Hill buzzing.
St Kilda came home with a rush last season, has its head round coach Ross Lyon's philosophies now, and with the addition of five ready-made senior players in recruits Steven King, Charlie Gardiner, Adam Schneider, Sean Dempster and a rehabilitated Michael Gardiner, has imposing depth and evenness.
A sizeable rocket has been delivered to the hugely disappointing Western Bulldogs of last year, and the pick-ups of key forward Scott Welsh and ruckman Ben Hudson shape — Chris Judd aside — as the most significant additions to a list for this season.
Even Richmond, popular fancy to go back-to-back bottom finishes, can scoff at those prophecies of doom with some conviction, with ruckman Troy Simmonds, midfielder Mark Coughlan and potential matchwinner Nathan Brown no longer hobbled by injuries or the rehabilitation from them.
While there will be at the very least one and probably several teams whose rises in 2008 catch most of us off-guard, there is also seemingly even more scope than usual for very red faces and raised eyebrows come the business end of the season.
Rohan Connolly’s pre-NAB Cup ladder
Geelong
Collingwood
Hawthorn
St Kilda
Kangaroos
Port Adelaide
West Coast
Western Bulldogs
Essendon
Brisbane
Fremantle
Sydney
Melbourne
Carlton
Adelaide
Richmond
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