Dunno why anyone follows the gibberish n hype coming out of the various sports programs / commentators or why anyone bothers to get sucked in by the crap that dribbles out of them. The longer n louder the meedjia squawks, the more people get sucked into paying attention to them, the more money they make.
Every club gets to play and operate according to the rules that the flogs in suits at AFLHQ establish. Some clubs are extremely well managed and tend to have successful periods while other clubs are poorly managed n struggle to achieve anything accordingly. Every club gets the same opportunity to achieve the same results, some just got no idea how to go about it properly.