Which is not to say either of us is entirely satisfied with the outcome. There's too much muddy water and the public is entitled to clarity. What happened to the AFL's internal review? All responsible sports administrations should welcome exposure on doping-related matters. Otherwise, what's the message to a sporting public whose faith has too often been shattered?

For now, though, we turned to the somewhat less-explosive issue of the bye within the AFL season.

In response to his view that the week off before the finals isn't as bad as the rolling, three-week split-round in mid-season, I put the view that six games-per-round for three weeks simply doesn't cut it. We need more than six matches on a weekend.

"Yes," he agreed with a wry grin, "six games a week would never sustain public interest over the long haul.

"The only way it could work," he opined, now with a wicked glint in his eye, "is for the six games to be played concurrently on Saturday afternoons. Then, after the final siren, spectators could go home and watch television replays of at least a couple of the other games that night."

Touche!

And before television was invented, the fans would buy the Sporting Globe on the way home and read about the six games. Particularly the one they'd been watching during the afternoon.

And before the pink paper? Well, by now it had dawned on us the game has always been an irresistible force. Four games, six games, eight or nine… for well over a hundred years it has somehow just worked. Without words, we jointly realised how remarkable it is that a sporting competition like the Victorian Football League, later the AFL, would develop from what it was at the beginning to where it is today.

Looking back, you can see how the pieces came together. Looking forward from the end of the 19th century, it was impossible to envisage how things would evolve. Those who devised the competition had no idea television would one day exist, let alone be the driving force – aided by air travel – for a national competition. Indeed, these advances would re-shape the whole wide world of sport.

Not that there was always a wide world of sport. The first modern Olympic Games were held in the same year the VFL was constituted: 1896. The enjoyment that might be offered by spectator sport, and the bringing together of people as performers and spectators, was then but a speculative notion.

If the establishment of a domestic football competition was difficult, spare a thought for Baron Pierre de Coubertin and those other pioneers who set out to create the Olympics. Not only did they need to persuade athletes to cross the oceans in the days before air travel; not only did they have to convince them to try their luck in a sporting competition which was barely visible even in the host cities of the time; not only did they need to persuade the public it might be worth watching; not only did they have to sell their message in an era of less-than-instant communications; not only did they need to do this in every language…

And furthermore, they faced the challenge of maintaining interest in their concept during four-yearly intervals between events. The fledgling attempts weren't promising. Three of the first four Olympics were held concurrently with World's Fair type expositions and were submerged within them. Then, after World War I caused an eight-year hiatus, the Olympic concept required regeneration. And just when participating numbers had climbed to a record level at Berlin in 1936, the 20th century's second global conflagration put the Games on hold for another twelve years.

And look at them now. That the scourges of terrorism, boycotts, and doping have touched the Games has only been due to their outrageous success.

Comparatively, the development of an Australian football league was a piece of cake. The VFL was born, and initially prospered, largely in one city with a train line enabling the inclusion of Geelong. Electric trams were soon to become a staple of Melbourne's transport system. The return trip from St Kilda to Essendon was no doubt a fair trek in 1897, but was manageable.

Later, air travel would become crucial. The Indigenous code had long flourished in three states beyond Victoria and when the power of television brought professionalism, these were harnessed (although one was contemptuously ignored) to establish a viable economy. The competition was thus able to nurture the two large, east-coast states which had long been indifferent to the Australian game and to achieve further economic growth.

So, here we are all these years later. In 2017, the competition in its expanded form turns 120 and the industry's health and vibrancy suggest many more years of plenty. So where to from here?

Well, it's no more possible to see the future than it was when the VFL began. This year, though, Gold Coast will play Port Adelaide for premiership points in China. How would that sentence have sounded in 1897? What was the Gold Coast anyway? And China may as well have been another planet.

Speaking of which, we heard during the week of a newly discovered solar system that might be capable of supporting life and it's only 39 light years away. I wonder if they have a footy ground.

Now there's a discussion point for next Friday's breakfast.