Footy is a passion, not some cold hearted, spread sheet dominated rational exercise.

On a Monday you want irrational reaction. You want emotion to trump reason.

What you really want is idiotic hysteria.

You’ve come to the right place.

Collingwood (56) v Hawthorn (121)

Collingwood haven’t been great this season and weirdly, having most of their players missing through injury hasn’t seemed to have helped at all.

The Pies will go into the offseason rueing the fact that injuries kept them from a first week finals loss.

Of course, the real reason Collingwood has struggled this year, are the giant, secret underground football academies the northern interstate clubs have.

Of course, this doesn’t explain Hawthorn and Geelong’s success, but you can keep your unhelpful ‘facts’ to yourself.

Hawthorn cleared a key KPI in this game. Brian Lake managed to get through it without almost strangling an opponent to death. Progress.

The Hawks are ridiculously good. They have talent, finals experienced and are very well coached. It’s so depressing.

They’re also not staring down an eight-year monster contract. So there’s that.

It’s Premiers or bust for the Hawks.

Carlton (90) v Essendon (90)

This was an instant classic.

So much so, that even Bomber Thompson looked interested in large parts of the match.

A seesawing game, it delivered the perfect ending, with neither Carlton nor Essendon winning. Dreams can come true kids.

Essendon got off to a very slow start and were down by 30 points at the first break.

The Bombers weren’t done though.

Mark Thompson gave them a huge spray and the players responded. I think he threatened to let Hird coach the rest of the game if they didn’t start playing with some intensity.

It looked like Carlton were done in the third, but the game narrowed for a crazy final quarter.

Essendon fans would have been very worried in the final stages. When Cam Wood is slotting goals against you, you're usually in trouble.

In the end it was the first draw of the season and the Bombers had locked down seventh place.

Turns out, Saturday afternoon football at the MCG is really good. Someone tell the AFL.

Fremantle (105) v Port Adelaide (97)

It was a cracking afternoon of footy and I had two TVs and an iPad going.

‘This is living!’ I yelled to myself, while fist pumping in my empty house.

While the Melbourne media missed it, Port Adelaide and Fremantle actually played quite an important game on the weekend for fourth spot on the ladder.

That’s apparently important for finals or something.

This was another game with large swings of momentum. Port was all over Freo before a nine-goal streak saw the Power take a big lead.

Port then threatened with five goals in a row before coming up short.

Fremantle actually ran out of interchanges with three minutes to play, which would have made the social medias explode if the Dockers had lost.

You think people hate the interchange cap now, the AFL would have had to evacuate to somewhere that didn’t care about AFL, like Western Sydney.

My suggestion is an Interchange Cap trading scheme. You should be able trade unused interchanges with people who need them in return for cash. Put in place a floating price.

People love that sort of stuff if I remember correctly.

Sydney (65) v Richmond (68)

Shock news before this game, with the Swans announcing they would be resting Buddy, with an eye on the next eight years.

There were other signs early on that the Swans weren’t taking this as seriously as Richmond.

At one point, Ivan Maric rushed through a set shot for a behind because not one single Sydney player had bothered to go to the goal square.

Richmond’s dominated the first quarter and led by 33-points, exactly the sort of thing to make every Tiger fan really worried.

The Swans are a seriously good team and Richmond, are Richmond, so by the third quarter every Tigers supporter knew what was happening when the Swans took the lead.

Except, then a weird thing happened, the Tigers stood up to the pressure, a thousand ninth memes were consigned to the dustbin of history and Richmond were in the finals.

For the Swans, this was disappointing, but they had a few key outs and the incentives between the teams were wildly disproportional.

I hope everyone remembers that apart from all the times I wrote in this column that I did, I never doubted the Tigers.

The only downside of the day was Richmond being forced to admit that selling their bandwagon earlier in the season was a mistake.

North Melbourne (123) v Melbourne (93)

After a day of great football, Melbourne stepped to the plate, and I have to say, their first half effort was very good.

For a moment it seemed that North’s recurring reality of losing to bad teams was happening again.

The Dees however remembered they’d lodged a request for a priority pick in the second half and made the necessary adjustments.

There was an awkward moment when James Frawley came out in a Geelong jumper.

Paul Roos says every Melbourne player is on the trade table and quite a few are also on eBay.

It’s all part of the event every Melbourne fan has been looking forward to, ‘Delist 2014.’

For North, this was the perfect run through for a finals loss. They need to lift significantly to trouble the top teams in the Finals.

Geelong (143) v Brisbane (81)

Geelong needed to win this to avoid going to Sydney in week one of the finals and it showed.

The Cats managed to handle the withering Brisbane like 18-degree heat and smash a Lions team missing Tom Rockliff and Dayne Zorko.

Tom Hawkins kicked seven and Geelong set up a final against Hawthorn this Friday. I feel we’ve been here before.

Brisbane has not been as bad as some predicted at the start of the season. Leppitsch has shown he has the potential to be a good coach and even Michael Voss has thrived as a reality TV show host.

Gold Coast (99) v West Coast (151)

It was cruel that Adam Simpson didn’t tell his players that Richmond had won the day before.

The Eagles played like their finals chance depended on it, belting a truly disappointing Suns.

West Coast has been the definition of average this year and their ninth place finish reflects that.

Both these sides will spend the offseason wondering what could have been and probably surfing I imagine.

Adelaide (141) v St Kilda (62)

At the Crows final game at the Portress this season, they cruised against a hapless St Kilda.

The result meant St Kilda clinched the wooden spoon, despite some fierce competition from Melbourne late in the season.

Hey, did you know Lenny Hayes was retiring? It was kept pretty quiet wasn’t it?

Hayes broke the AFL’s tackle record in the third quarter and his effort will be sorely missed by the Saints next year.

The decline of the Saints is truly mindboggling when you consider where they were a few seasons ago.

Geelong and Hawthorn have remained powerful teams in that time, the Cats even with a change of coach.

Saints fans can’t be happy with the direction of the club and its focus on sideline pet projects like establishing themselves in New Zealand.

Alan Richardson has flagged significant list changes in the offseason. Luckily, free agency definitely sees the good players go to the worst teams.

For the Crows, Eddie Betts kicked five in this one and Rory Sloane had 30 possessions.

This season has shown glimpses of competency from the Crows but mainly they’ve delivered some truly average performances.

To put it in Adelaide speak, they’ve been more home brand quince paste than Maggie Beer’s.

Western Bulldogs (109) v Greater Western Sydney (115)

How do you know you’ve had a bad season? You play the 4.40 slot in Round 23.

While the AFL has been rightly criticized all year for its crowds, the fact that 14,725 people showed up for this is testament to the resilience of Bulldogs and AFL supporters.

Both sides had nothing to play for except pride and surprisingly, both sides seemed to care about that.

There was even a melee after the three quarter time siren. It was great to see, mainly because I just really like the word ‘melee.’ Melee.

Unfortunately for the Bulldogs, they started late and seemed to find inventive ways to turn the ball over or stuff things up.

It was a sad end for the Bulldogs, who showed glimpses of improvement over the season, but perhaps not enough for anyone to be happy about it.

As for the Giants, six wins are an improvement, but the embarrassment of riches up there means they need to speed things up.

Their members, Don, Sharon and Eloni deserve so much more.