ANDREW Demetriou is investigating why Victorian teams can't win the flag. I suspect he already knows the answers. Anyone involved with the AFL scene can see why the clubs here don't cut the mustard.

Here's a quick summary, Andrew: Vic clubs don't win premierships because, with two exceptions, they don't have as much money as the interstaters. Hence, they aren't as well coached, or conditioned, and they haven't recruited as wisely — particularly with the rookie list.

They are still lumbered with archaic ways and silly past players with no idea about modern managerial practices while West Coast and Adelaide are uber professional, corporate-structured monoliths that hand-pick their directors, doctors and sponsors from an entire state.

Geelong aside — and maybe Hawthorn in Tassie — the Victorians don't have home-ground advantages any more either, because the AFL herded them all into two grounds in the name of a '90s craze called "ground rationalisation".

But the interstate teams have their own Windy Hills and Victoria Parks, and when they come here they either play in the Telstra bubble, or at the 'G, which they treat as an inspirational special occasion while complaining they don't play there enough, since it prepares them better for finals.

The absolute upshot, Andrew, as you're aware, is that Victoria has 10 of the 16 teams, and that's pretty much the main reason it hasn't provided a premier for six years and counting. Jeff Kennett actually makes sense on this, pointing to the elephant in the room, that it's hard to compete with one and two-team towns, even from a fanatical football state of five million, with 10 teams vying for the same scraps (often from Eddie's table).

If the AFL investigation fleshes out the details — West Coast did this, Sydney did that, St Kilda's injury management stuffed a certain flag, Collingwood and Essendon have no excuse — the exercise might be worthwhile. But what will the AFL do about it?

You hear the talkback moaning. "The AFL don't do enough for the Victorian clubs." On the whinge goes, when the principal reason for Victorian clubs struggling is that there are so many of them.

The AFL can advise clubs on finances. It can fund them to ensure they're viable and able to pay the full salary cap. It can even pay for better facilities. Demetriou's regime has, or will, provide all those props.

But the moment the AFL starts telling Victorian clubs how to run football departments, how to recruit, what's the best player-development system, who should coach them etc, we might as well re-name it Australian Football Entertainment — as in Vince McMahon's World Wrestling Entertainment — because the competition will be so contrived and centrally controlled that it will no longer be a competition.

On Tuesday, Kennett spoke to me about how nothing existed as socialistic as the AFL, with its draft, salary cap and hand-outs for the weak. It was strange to hear an ex-Liberal headkicking premier using the word socialism without following with a sermon about the evils of Trade Hall.

While he favoured those equalising measures, Kennett made the point that there were limits to what the AFL should do for its clubs, Victorian or interstate, and that it would be wrong to "tilt" the on-field balance in any direction. I agree.

The league tilted the rules to favour the Brisbane Lions and Sydney, for the sake of the code. If it was a necessary compromise, given the inherent disadvantages of those clubs — and the game's growth in Queensland suggests it was pragmatically correct — it would be appalling to see more of such manipulations from head office.

Footy socialism, now approaching Swedish levels, has been hugely successful on several counts. Once the league wanted to kill clubs — remember the Fitzroy Bulldogs, Melbourne Hawks and the way Fitzroy became an organ donor to Brisbane. Now it keeps them alive.

The competition is tight, despite the interstate hegemony, to the extent that teams can rise and fall relatively quickly, with no gimme games in the first 11 rounds, and injuries are the major variable determining position.

Socialism is necessary for an even competition and a safety net, but it can't go too far, with clubs no longer allowed to truly compete, or worse, no longer distinct entities, just obedient drones kowtowing to Big Brother AFL.

Enough compromises to Victorian club identity have been made in the name of equality and modernity. The draft randomly distributes players regardless of tribal affiliations. They play at the same grounds, coaching panels and officials are professionals who work for any and every club, alternate jumpers are mandated. Even the father-son rule — one of the last concessions to tribalism — is watered down in the name of "fairness".

Clubs must compete, as if in a jungle. We don't want the weak devoured, but equally, if there is no jungle, we won't have different beasts, only the same one with different stripes.

Jake Niall's column appears every Thursday.