From the Leader Newspapers - www.localfooty.com
Reported by Paul Amy
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THE question has cropped up ever since the VFL took in AFL reserves teams in 2000.
Can an unaligned team win a flag?
No, is invariably the answer.
The thinking goes that a side of VFL players will always lack the fitness and class to overcome an opponent equipped with 12 AFL players.
Saade Ghazi said as much when he was coaching Port Melbourne, one of three so-called stand-alone teams in the VFL (Frankston and Tasmania also operate under their own steam).
Peter Banfield, then coaching Casey Scorpions, offered the same view a year earlier in a radio interview.
North Ballarat has come closest to doing it, reaching the grand final. But that was in the first year of the revamp, when there were 16 teams. As the competition settled and the standard rose, the Roosters floundered.
