At HPN we are reading the outrage regarding North Melbourne’s decision to rest players, having clinched a finals berth and having no particular reason to win their round 23 match. We are very much looking forward to the magical proposal whereby the AFL somehow makes mathematically meaningless pre-finals games meaningful to teams.

Let’s be clear about this. North Melbourne’s opportunity to mass-rest players is an inherent feature of sporting league tables. Not an AFL problem – a feature of the very quantification of sporting competition itself.

Wherever teams play each other in a round robin regular season, and that season determines placings for a knockout post-season, sometimes, teams clinch positions before the season finishes. That’s just the basic mathematics of the league table exercise.

The format of post-seasons vary, with clinchable features including guaranteed playoff berths, double chances, home advantage and bye weeks. In soccer it’s usually relegation or continental championship places instead.

Sometimes teams will clinch a position and lose the chance to gain a better one. Such clubs will usually rest players, manage injuries, protect their stars, conserve energy and effort, and eliminate risks. This is because their goal is to win the championship. In such situations, the results of their final regular season games are meaningless to them.

Nothing can be done about such selection shenanigans within the confines of a sport with a league table and finals. These and similar behaviours are an inherent feature of virtually every sporting league. At some point mathematics prevails. Towards season’s end, team goals change. Winning is no longer always the highest priority. When it comes to end-of-season games there’s a spectrum of goals that depend on circumstance:

LOSING IS PREFERABLE - this is old-fashioned tanking. Whether it’s for a better draft pick, saving a previously-traded protected pick in an NBA, or chasing an easier fixture the following season, there’s a long and storied tradition of clubs looking at their long-term interests and saying “yeah let’s give the kids a go” and “let’s try everyone in new roles”. Tanking really comes in two flavours – throwing individual specific matches, and giving the coach a set of conditions where losing becomes overwhelmingly likely

AVOIDING A LOSS IS THE PRIORITY – this is the classic “both teams need a draw to avoid relegation” final week soccer league situation. Generally in such circumstances there is not a force on this earth that will lead to any other result than the mutually desired draw.

NEITHER WINNING OR LOSING IS IMPORTANT – this is the situation North Melbourne and Fremantle find themselves in. They don’t particularly care if they win, they just want to have what they perceive as a better chance in week 1 of finals by freshening everyone up. It’s also pretty common after teams in American leagues lock up a number 1 seed to run their depth players extensively. The goals here are basically to improve player’s readiness for finals and conserve their health and energy.

WINNING IS IMPORTANT – the default situation in most games and also in many end-of-season scenarios. Post-season positions are still on the line. Teams go all-out.

We do acknowledge that North may in this case have a slight preference for a loss, because it eliminates a small risk of a final in Adelaide (ie, if Adelaide beat Geelong and Brisbane beat the Bulldogs). But there’s also a small risk that North lose and end up in Sydney instead.

Moreover, the principle of double effect is well established both in sport in general and in the AFL. If resting players and selecting kids benefits you long term but also gets you a better draft pick, that’s seen as acceptable practice. Likewise, if North are legitimately resting tired and sore players, but that also secures them a reduced risk of an interstate final, that really has to be acceptable too.

Now, does such extensive resting improve a team’s chances? Hard to say. Fremantle rested half their side in round 23 2013 and got smashed by the Saints, then beat the Cats at Kardinia Park to earn a home preliminary final. Maybe North are flirting with form and will in fact sabotage themselves instead of improving their preparation. Maybe carrying strong momentum into finals is its own benefit. Who knows? But at the end of the day, that’s a club’s decision to make based on the evidence they have and the situation they face. How a club uses meaningless games, thrown up by mathematical chance, to prepare for finals is nobody else’s business.

The bigger question we’d ask is – how would a league even stop such selection shenanigans from occurring? The results of post-clinching, pre-finals games are mathematically and inescapably meaningless. Clubs don’t need to try in such games. They think they’re better off not trying. How do we change that, within the confines of still having a sporting league with finals?

Meaningless games are meaningless. The coaches know it. The players know it. If forced to play rather than sit out, in the interest of pretending a club cares about a result that objectively does not matter, players will not go as hard, will not risk injury, will not waste energy. It’s the easiest thing in the world for star players to jog about at half-pace avoiding contests and injury risks if there’s an implicit incentive or explicit intent to treat a match in such a way.

The end result of any policy which prevents clubs with an interest in mass-resting players from doing so may well be a similar walkover compared to desperate fringe players trying their hearts out. The latter is what is likely to happen on the weekend and will make for an interesting spectacle in its own right.