Steve Hitstirrer is a well-travelled, sports-hardened, armchair expert, prepared to tear the scab off a whole range of sporting wounds. Love him or hate him, you’ll find indifference is not an option.

When you make the finals of your sport’s premier competition for the first time in eight years, expectations aren’t going to be all that high. No one was expecting Carlton to sweep through the AFL finals and into the grand final to capture their first flag since 1995. In fact no one was expecting the Blues to have a 30-point lead well into the final quarter of their elimination final against Brisbane Lions at the Gabba, least of all it seems, coach Brett Ratten.

Of course Ratten wasn’t out in the middle making the dumb mistakes, falling away when it mattered most – no, he was up in the box making his own dumb mistakes. Why did the Blues continue to play full field one-on-one football with such a handsome lead? Where was the all hands on deck 50 metre flood. Why were the Lions given enough space to storm home to such a stirring victory?

Brett Ratten said in a post-match interview that the Lions kept on coming.

"To their credit they just kept surging forward, hitting forward, knocking forward and just scrambling the ball," he said.

"They just won a lot of one-on-ones towards the back end."

Well Brett, I suggest that they shouldn’t have been in a lot of one-on-one contests towards the back end. Key forwards Jonathan Brown and Daniel Bradshaw should have been well and truly swamped. Even to the extent of dragging Brendan Fevola back to exact some close-marking revenge, Ratten should have had blokes all over Brown and Bradshaw like cheap blue suits.

Instead Brisbane was allowed to run free, run down the Blues and continue a remarkable unbeaten Gabba finals run. The Lions now advance to tackle Western Bulldogs, while the Blues start up their mad Monday celebrations only a week later than usual.

Not that it really matters in the long run, as the finals are clearly a two-horse race with the Cats struggling to threaten a rampant St Kilda. The Saints have been the clear front-runners all year and looked calm and completely in control during their clinical defeat of Collingwood on the weekend. Many have been waiting for them to stumble at the pointy end of the season, but that looks increasingly unlikely.

Many are climbing on board the Adelaide bandwagon, as the only real title contenders from the rest of the remaining finalists. The Crows smashed Essendon on the weekend and now face Collingwood. The Crows will prove their premiership credentials if they overcome the Magpies, at least for a week. Geelong will be waiting for them, keen to make it three grand final appearances in a row. It's hard to see any of the four sides playing this weekend really challenging the Saints or Cats the week after, but footy is a strange game, just ask Jeff Kennett.

Hawthorn president Kennett has given an early indication of how the Hawks plan to rebuild after a disappointing 2009 defence of their premiership.

"I still harbour a dream that will see Hawthorn have the first female player among our ranks," Kennett said.

"Impossible? Not when I think of the advances of women in the army or services generally, or in flight around the globe as astronauts, or many other occupations where the inclusion of women has changed dramatically in our lifetime," he continued, seemingly unhindered by any innate sense of reality.

With AFL CEO Andrew Demetriou accused of making the game more and more like netball every year, the concept of a female AFL player doesn't seem that far-fetched. Certainly Jeff Kennett is nothing, if not a visionary. Of course there will have to be some further changes made to the rules.

Jersey grabbing exchanges will have to go; the risk of an embarrassing wardrobe malfunction would be way too high. Hip and shoulder collisions would have to be removed completely, as female players would have too great an advantage in the hip department. Female players will need their own change rooms, their own drug testing procedures, possibly even their own trainers.

Can you begin to imagine the tanking uproar if a struggling side suddenly starts half a dozen female players in the last few games of the season as part of their "discovery phase"?

Of course many would suggest that Carlton have long beaten Hawthorn to the punch. The way Fevola carries on at times, he could well already be the first woman to play AFL.

Now you can follow the Hitstirrer on Twitter - http://twitter.com/SteveHitstirrer

Take a stroll back through Hitstirrer's greatest hits

Could Brett Ratten have saved the Blues from defeat?
Is the premiership a two-horse race?
Is Jeff Kennett right about women one day playing in the AFL?