No team has won an AFL premiership from seventh spot on the ladder. Indeed, only one team has won it from any lower than fourth, and, had today's final system been in use, Adelaide in 1998 would have been eliminated in week one of September.

That gives you some idea of the rarefied air in which the Western Bulldogs now float after a third stirring finals victory in as many weeks.

True to the narrative of this remarkable season, however, there is a significant twist. Actually, maybe a couple.

One is that no previous finalist has won 15 games in a season, as did the Bulldogs, yet finished as low as seventh. The other is that prior to this season, no team finishing that low had been given a week to freshen up.

In the debate about the pre-finals bye (which we'll tackle in more detail below) one thing is certain. That the Bulldogs benefited more than any of their finals rivals, the break allowing them to reintroduce injured key players Tom Liberatore, Jack Macrae, Easton Wood and Jordan Roughead back into the mix.

Had they not been available for the elimination final, would the Dogs even have survived that Perth road trip, the road trip that kicked off what has become an incredible finals tale? Yet the football world should be glad they did.

AFL football badly needs some romance right now, and a fairytale of this magnitude is pretty hard to top. The importance, though, goes way beyond a feel-good factor.

The AFL era overall has been a good one for giving clubs decent prospects of a slice of the premiership pie. When the Bulldogs run out against Sydney on Saturday, they'll become the 15th different club in the 27 seasons of the AFL to play off for a premiership. With the exception of "newbies" GWS and Gold Coast, only Richmond is yet to get there.

It's a pretty decent strike rate. But there's no question also that in recent years it's dried up significantly.

When Geelong broke their 44-year premiership drought in 2007, we'd had 11 different clubs win flags over 18 seasons. But nine years later, it's still 11 clubs. In fact just three – Hawthorn, Geelong and Sydney – have shared nine of the last 11 premierships.

We're likely to see the Giants add to that list sooner than later, despite Saturday night's preliminary final near-miss. But without detracting from their rapid development, that's hardly a test case given the significant kick-start they were given at birth.

Which leaves the 2016 Western Bulldogs pushing the case not only for romance, but genuine hope for the stragglers of today. Which, less than two years ago, was them.

The football world moves on so quickly it's easy now to forget just how poor a condition not only a team but an entire football club looked in early October of 2014 when captain Ryan Griffen walked out to join the Giants and coach Brendan McCartney was effectively sacked.

Luke Beveridge picked up the reins with pre-season already in swing, the trade period completed and the national draft just two weeks away. Yet with essentially the same squad which had finished a lowly 14th, the new coach got the Bulldogs into the finals. Just 12 months after that, they're one win from a premiership.

Only seven of Saturday night's 22 have been added to the mix since Beveridge's arrival, and Tom Boyd aside, none have come with big reputations. Shane Biggs was a low-profile trade-in, Joel Hamling delisted by his old club, Toby McLean the earliest draft pick at No.25.

The improvement has come largely from within, Beveridge giving veteran Matthew Boyd a new lease on life as a running defender, and the likes of stand-in skipper Easton Wood, Liam Picken, Lachie Hunter and Tory Dickson rising to levels under his watch that many wouldn't have thought possible.

The modern era has not seen a better example of the power of a good coach to make a massive difference to a club's fortunes than this rapid transformation.

Can the Bulldogs now go all the way? Why not? I won't be tipping them, but I didn't tip them in any of their other three finals, either, so that's a start.

Few would disagree that Sydney go into Saturday's match a deserved favourite.

Since that surprise qualifying final defeat, they've steamrolled first Adelaide, then Geelong. Their midfield has the bigger names, they have the stingiest defence, conceding fewer points than any team since St Kilda in 2009, and their attack looks more potent, ranked fourth for points scored against the Bulldogs' lowly 12th.

These are all logical and compelling reasons for a third Sydney premiership in the last 12 seasons. But logic hasn't always played a big part in how this remarkable season has played out. And the Dogs did beat the Swans in their one and only meeting this year.

The Bulldogs have long been used to playing the gallant underdog, game but ultimately unlucky or outclassed. The thought of being consigned to that role again will bristle with those most familiar with the club and the players currently representing it so well.

But this version has already made its own history. After the events of the last few weeks, what's a little more?

AND WHILE I'M AT IT

So how did the pre-finals bye turn out? Brilliantly, if you were the Western Bulldogs. Not so great if you were West Coast, and perhaps not Geelong nor GWS, either.

Up and about: Swans early heat proved too hard to handle. Photo: Adam Trafford/AFL Media

We're not going to have definitive or quantifiable answers. Which seemed to really annoy some of the stats gurus out there who think every aspect of a game and a team performance can be explained like a science experiment.

But if you don't think the following numbers are at least worthy of some serious debate, you're kidding yourself.

They are, of course, that prior to the weekend 17 of 18 previous qualifying final winners had gone on to win their preliminary finals. This year, it was zero from two.

Yes, there are other factors which play a part. This year, one of the preliminary final "upstarts" just happened to be the team which had finished on top of the ladder. The other was a side good enough to win 15 games yet still finish as low as seventh. Which speaks to just how even this season's top eight was.

But perhaps that just strengthens the argument about how significant even the small differences can make. And there have been enough credible voices agreeing that for teams who'd played week in, week out for five months, just one game in 27 or 28 days at the most critical point of the season was a major and unwelcome break from routine.

Alastair Clarkson was the first, well before the finals even started. On Friday night, after Sydney had booted seven goals to Geelong's five behinds, Ross Lyon said the evidence was "indisputable".

"We're creatures of habit. Man's made to work," Lyon said on Fox Footy. "Once you break that cycle, it's impossible to replicate an AFL senior game over that period of time."

A leading Sydney player conceded privately last week he'd been very anxious about the Swans going into the qualifying final, given their previous poor history coming off a bye. He wasn't overly surprised they were flat against the Giants. Back on the horse, so to speak, Sydney have been a different team the past two weeks.

Geelong's Cam Guthrie noted on SEN after his side's loss that it was "like they [Sydney] took their momentum from last week's win straight into the game".

Which well and truly seemed to trump the fact it was Geelong which went into the penultimate weekend of the season with the best recent record of any preliminary finalist with eight wins on the trot.

Should that be the case? Are not teams which finish higher on the ladder entitled to any advantage possible over those lower given the work they've put in to get there?

And whether or not you believe the long layoffs were a significant factor in the Geelong and GWS losses, was a few sides resting players in meaningless final round games enough of a problem to even risk this question being asked? Count me as one who doesn't think so.