If you were reading this column with the AFL fixture as it should be, you'd still be digesting a big Thursday night final, getting set for another a few hours from now with a big Saturday double-header to follow.
But you're not. Because this is the eighth season with a pre-finals bye, and it's still making about as much sense as it first did in 2016. Which is none. And that's whether you're talking about either the aesthetics, or the integrity issues which surround it.
And now there's even more reason to change it. Because were that week off shifted to the week before the Grand Final, you'd also be dealing effectively with issues which have acquired more significance since the bye was introduced.
Like the very real danger of the mandatory 12-break for players under the concussion protocols costing someone a Grand Final spot they had recovered sufficiently to take. That one is a ticking time bomb which will inevitably go off sooner than later, who knows, even a few weeks from now.
Imagine the kerfuffle should, say, Patrick Dangerfield hit his head on the ground during the preliminary final, play out the game but then be placed in protocols and thus miss the Grand Final because of a post-game headache which abates quickly and never returns?
The continued success of the non-Victorian teams has also reinforced the logistical challenges they face having to pack up and move virtually a whole club for an MCG Grand Final, so much so that the planning for them has to start before they've even won their preliminary final.
READ: Non-Victorian teams must start prepping for Grand Final in prelim week
They are challenges the local clubs never have to deal with. And with every little per cent counting when it comes to the biggest game of the year, don't tell me that difference hasn't played some part in the 8-1 record of Victorian teams against interstate visitors on Grand Final day since 2013.
Now stack on that pile of reason the halt which comes to all the momentum generated during a pulsating finish to the season proper.
Carlton was out of finals and Fremantle fighting to replace it for close to three hours last Sunday night as the football world hung on the last of 207 home-and-away games, a fervour that would have rolled unabated through the course of this week as we headed for four big finals.
What have we got now? Well, there's the league's awards night, and of course there's the start to the AFLW season, which gets some clearer air around it, and as a constantly-evolving and improving entity, it could certainly use some more enthusiastic spruiking from the league than it's had at times in recent years.
But is that enough on its own to justify having stopped one of the most memorable men's seasons ever dead in its tracks? As much as I enjoy women's football, I don't think so.
And anyone seriously arguing that an extra week's wait for the men's finals just builds that momentum even more needs to have a good look at mainstream and social media these past few days.
They're not anticipating the qualifying finals and elimination finals and the various strategies and individual match-ups which will be played out in them. No, it's all about Christian Petracca and whether he stays at Melbourne or goes, and a score of other trade requests and delistings at other clubs.
Rodney Eade claims the AFL's fixturing of finals has been poor, with decisions made by the broadcasters and not the AFL.
It actually has felt this week like the season is over already and we've moved straight into the trade period.
And no, I'm not climbing off my hobby horse about how fundamentally the pre-finals bye has altered the balance of power in terms of the final eight. All, remember, because Fremantle (twice) and North Melbourne between 2013-15, with their finals places already assured, rested players in the final home-and-away round.
It was a complete overreaction, which while offering teams less excuse to field lesser-strength teams in relatively meaningless final-round games, completely diminished much of the advantage teams once held by finishing in the top four.
Yes, they still get a second chance if they lose their qualifying final. But they are now effectively disadvantaged in two ways should they win it; first, by having played just one game in 27-odd days by the time they play their preliminary final (having had two weeks off in four) but doing so against a side which has also had a break just a couple of weeks earlier rather than having played right through on a weekly basis since the mid-season bye.
If you think that has made a minimal difference, consider the following numbers.
Prior to the introduction of the pre-finals bye in 2016, 17 of the previous 18 preliminary finals from 2007-15 were won by a team which had won its qualifying final, had a week off, then took on a more-fatigued opponent. In seven seasons of the pre-finals bye (2016-20 and 22-23) the record of qualifying final winners in the preliminary final is 8-6.
That is the issue far more than the amount of assistance the pre-finals bye has offered the teams in the lower half of the top eight, though neither can the amount of difference it has made to them also be disputed, the Western Bulldogs in 2016 still the best example.
Yes, the Dogs were magnificent for four games in a row, but the week off after the final home and away game did allow them to return four key players to the line-up for an elimination final against West Coast in Perth. Whether that could have happened without them is highly debatable.
Since then, GWS (in 2019) made it to a Grand Final from the bottom half of the eight, something which had never happened in the previous 16 seasons under the current top eight system. The Bulldogs also made it to the final Saturday in September, in 2021, but there wasn't a pre-finals bye that year.
And whether you think the boosting of the bottom half of the eight's flag chances at the expense of the top four is good thing or not, you simply cannot argue the bye hasn't profoundly tipped the balance of power in finals, at the same time diminishing the importance of finishing as high in the top eight as possible.
So here's the checklist: 1. We've fundamentally changed a finals system which worked perfectly, not because we thought there was a problem with it, but because of a couple of "nothing" games at the tail-end of 200-odd.
2. We're ignoring the chance, by simply moving this week off three weeks forward, to both remove the calamitous possibility of a superstar missing a Grand Final for which they were fully fit, and to redress the unfair imbalance between a team travelling for a Grand Final and one based at home.
3. We've spent six months building an AFL season to a crescendo everyone was talking about, then promptly asked everyone to twiddle their thumbs for an extra seven days but stay tuned. News flash. They haven't.
I'm starting to think it's merely pride which is preventing the AFL from getting rid of this unnecessary break, or at least moving it where it actually is of some value. Because on any measure, the pre-finals bye has caused way more issues than the trivial ones it was introduced to address.
You can read more of Rohan Connolly's work at FOOTYOLOGY.