FOOTBALL'S arms race is over; it was only ever a phoney anyway.

Only one of six non-Victorian clubs won last weekend, only one is in the top four.

As the betting stands this morning, only two, West Coast and Fremantle, will start favourite in matches this weekend. Bleak times have set in the badlands.

Really, no one ought to be surprised. It's tough out there in the hinterland. Victorian clubs complain sometimes about the tyranny of distance in the national competition. But they only have to travel four or five times a season.

The far-flung clubs have to travel every second week, sometimes more.

A man can only watch so many safety demonstrations, cloud formations and 24-hours-old news bulletins before his form begins to suffer.

For the poor frontier clubs, travelling is one thing, going home another. Brisbane and Sydney have no football culture. Perth and Adelaide do, but it's weird.

Recruits from Victoria — still the biggest single source of footballers — are bound to feel isolated, unloved, alien. In Brisbane, they will suffer homesickness, in Perth, hallucinations.

As for Adelaide, how is a man meant to ever feel truly at ease in a place where Ken Cunningham tops the ratings?

The AFL hasn't helped. Salary cap relief is pitiful and in any case is on the way out.

AFL boss Andrew Demetriou seems to have no idea of how much it costs to live on the Gold Coast, even if you don't count the domestics and the helipad.

Attention to junior development is minimal. Last year, NSW did not win a match in the under 16 and 18 carnivals, or have one player drafted to the AFL.

Now the scholarship system has been shut down. Sydney is about as conquered as Mars.

The non-Victorian clubs are not called "interstate" for nothing. They're a long way from anywhere that matters. Following AFL on television for these exiles is a fraught exercise that involves sitting up into the small hours, curtains drawn, hoping that no one sees you.

Brisbane Lions' coach Leigh Matthews let out an involuntary roar early one recent morning while watching a pirated tape of the 1978 grand final, but thinks he got away with it.

The struggles of the interstate clubs are poorly understood in Melbourne. Victorian clubs harp on about how their interstate rivals — with their monopoly markets — earn and spend more money by far.

They make a big deal about their plush, sophisticated facilities.

It's a fatuous whinge. When did a spa bath last get a kick? When did a sports science guru last coach an AFL club? Apart from Neil Craig.

The Victorian clubs conveniently overlook their many advantages: the eternally generous fellow-feeling among them, for instance, and their privilege to be in the city that is the seat of football power, too.

Instead, they dwell on the fact that no Victorian team has won the premiership since 2000, and none has even featured in the grand final since 2003.

This, as can now be seen, is a blip. Now, the game's natural order is reasserting itself.

Indeed, it is looking increasingly likely that a Victorian club will win the premiership again within 10 years.

And when the non-Victorian clubs want a scapegoat, they will not have to look far. It will be, like everything else, Eddie's fault.