THE year of clarified fat, that being 2007, has given us the best AFL season ever. It has been a fairytale from the first bounce. It is the Rumpelstiltskin story all over again.

Everything the AFL touched has turned to gold. There are so many highlights to chew over, on this one day in September, that if we locked the doors until Scotty "Big Blower" McLaren bounced the Sherrin this afternoon, we would get through only 1/27th of what has made 2007 great.

And if, for some idiotic astrological reason, the season had to be done all over again, there are only two changes that wold be required. Carlton forward Brendan Fevola would take the boots off at Subicao Oval five minutes earlier and the Warren Tredrea bow, which made a late charge for highlight of the year, would have been introduced in round seven. Apart from those tweaks, the season would be exactly the same.

The 2007 season has had dramatic yips and misses. I took a peek at that authoritative football statistical website slavendata.com this week, and with one match to go the Professor of the Drop Punt at Lithgow University, Rampaging Roy Slaven, has declared 2007 the Year of the Fat Behind.

Remember, AFL players actually practise goalkicking. The big names lurk long after the witches hats and the tackle bags have been tossed into the back of the ute. They blaze away until they can no longer see the big sticks. Many rusted-on fans wonder why the stars bother.

During the middle of the season, Collingwood Super Coach Mick Malthouse argued in his weekly spray that teams no longer expect forwards to kick goals. This was a refreshing perspective.

Super Swan Barry Hall, no stranger to a large behind, maintained in a thoughtful think piece that the yips affect the whole team and have to be worked on by all of the playing group. No, he did not explain how! He told us that in his early days at St Kilda, coaches got him into a goalkicking routine that required so much concentration that, in the moment that mattered, he forgot to kick the ball.

The AFL in its 150th year will find a new audience in the desert sands of the United Arab Emirates. Make no mistake, Dubai is a hell of a footy town. Sure, it is a place for the sand specialist but the local footy-mad community is licking its lips in anticipation of everything that the Crows and the Magpies have to offer.

Once the UAE has had a sniff, its sports fans will want a lot more. The North Melbourne Kangaroos, who have been wandering about the joint looking for a place to call home, could do a lot worse than put their hands in the air and relocate to downtown Dubai. Money would not be a problem.

The Crows' leadership group imposed curfew on its players. This was an immediate success. Imagine where Adelaide would have finished without the strictly enforced 10pm lights-out regime launched just before they made their startling run into the eight. The curfew is part of the culture that Adelaide is developing.

It requires the Monday night European cinema classic, fondue on Thursdays, and playing Puccini in the rooms on game day.

At the AFL box office, more Australians turned up bellowing, "Let us in you bludgers!", than ever before. The sale of seats at Telstra Dome twice for the Carlton v Hawthorn game was the financial breakthrough of this decade.

This is how the AFL will cope with expanding interest in the game. The MCG could have used the double-up system last Friday night for the Collingwood v Geelong sellout.

The two-in-one system can work only when seats are sold to supporters of the same club or neutrals. It would have been difficult, for example, to enjoy the preliminary final clash if a dyed-in-the-fur Cats supporter was asked to double up with Game Over Joffa and his Magpie cheersquad mates. The caper obviously needs to be handled with tact.

Grand final week has been a ball-tearer. With EI eating away at the foundations of the Melbourne Cup carnival, the 2007 Festival of the Boot must be grabbed with both hands and swallowed whole.

By the way, if you have returned from the far side of planet Coosbane in recent days, Sheeds is no longer coaching the Bombers. Fact!