Regrets are an inevitable part of life. They come with the territory of breathing and are a part of the unwritten deal we all sign for the right to exist.
Although some contrition can feel enormous โ such as the misery born when a relationship breaks down or after committing a far more criminal act โ others are forgotten in the blink of an eye.
In terms of the unpredictable game of football, there are a plethora of scenarios that have made or broken careers.
What if your side picked a different player from a certain draft?
What if your star spearhead had kicked straight when it mattered?
What if sacking your coach led to your premiership drought continuing?
Well, for fans of every creed we have sought to answer the question that has rankled you for years and kept you up at nights for far too long.
We can't promise that we won't open old wounds, as let's face it, that is the entire point of the exercise.
PART ONE:ย Adelaide, Brisbane Bears, Brisbane Lions, Carlton
PART TWO:ย Collingwood, Essendon, Fitzroy, Fremantle
PART FOUR: Melbourne, North Melbourne, Port Adelaide, Richmond
PART FIVE: Sydney, St Kilda, West Coast, Western Bulldogs
However, if we can help you find closure by looking at the facts and asking what if the doors slid the other way, then we have done our job.
As always, feel free to critique our non-linear traipses, as we are tipping some of you are unlikely to enjoy some of the conclusions we have drawn.
With the first two instalments in this series behind us, here is part three of the game's greatest โwhat ifs'ย since 1990.
Greater Western Sydney
What if they landed 'Buddy' at the end of 2013?
For fans of teams that are old enough to walk into a bottle shop and not raise the suspicions of the clerk behind the counter, the Greater Western Sydney Giants have often been looked at disdainfully.
With a plethora of draft and salary cap concessions gifted to the fledgling franchise in their start up years leading to chagrin being foisted upon them from the vast majority of the footballing public, there has always been a notion that it is only a matter of time before the Breakfast Pointers break through and claim their inaugural flag.
Still, nearly a decade after the garish Giants clomped onto the scene, the league's youngest club, and their band of 30,000 paid members, are still waiting for this previously conceded flag to fly in Sydney's west.
Obviously with a young team, the club's opening years saw waves that wouldn't have toppled a toddler rather than that of a tsunami.
The side, comprised mainly of top end talent from around the nation, consistently played in front of paltry crowds and routinely had cricket scores tallied against them.
However, after claiming their second successive spoon in as many seasons at the level, their rise to prominence could have been nitrous oxide boosted like one of Vin Diesel's hot rods had they secured the signature of the contemporary game's greatest offensive talent.
SEE ALSO: What if Maynard had been paid a free-kick?
At the completion of the 2013 season, Lance Franklin had done it all. The Western Australian spearhead had claimed two Colemans, topped the tonne in 2008 and collected a pair of premiership medallions.
Despite the fact that the Hawks would go on to create history by completing the league's most recent three-peat, the then 26-year-old dynamo had just become a free-agent and was eyeing his options.
Originally, the rumour mill had โBuddy' joining the Giants on a six-year deal worth $1.2 million a season, however, this deal was usurped by a richer deal from the harbour city's east instead.
On October 1, 2013, the Greater Western Sydney Football Club officially pulled out of the running for Franklin's ink on their parchment and instead decided to go fishing through the schools of much smaller fish that remained in the sea.
Although the current eight-time All Australian would eventually prefer a home amongst Sydney's latte set, one can't help but wonder what would have been had Franklin chosen to shift from the league's penthouse to the outhouse following the new years eve fireworks that rung in 2014 anno domini.
This mooted move from the premiers to the wooden spooners would have almost certainly fueled his competitiveness and satisfied his hunger for a challenge, but could it also have worked out better than our shared reality?
Would โBuddy' have added to his pair of premiership medallions had he joined the Giants?
How would the club's forward line have functioned?
Would he still be on the precipice of becoming the sixth man to kick more than 1,000 AFL/VFL goals?
If you're still with me after my several thousand words and string of unprovable hypotheses, then strap yourself in, as we're going back to the past with the irregular aim of getting as many butterflies to flap their wings at once.
Between the start of 2014 โ the year that Franklin would have made his debut with GWS โ and the beginning of 2016 โ the season that the Giants first made the finals โ the orange and charcoal clad kids scored a grand total of 524-goals across 44-games, after entering the forward 50 on 2,116 occasions and taking 460 grabs within said arc.
If you run these raw statistics through a battery powered bean counter, you will find that the Leon Cameron led side averaged 48 inside 50s, 10.45 marks inside the semi-circle for just shy of 12-goals per game.
These numbers tell us that the Giants averaged a major on every four trips inside 50 and a mark every 4.6 journeys.
With Franklin tallying means of 3.23-goals and 3.07-offensive marks across his 39-games within the same period of time, it would be fair โ and exceedingly obvious โ to suggest that had he plied his trade at the Showgrounds, and not the SCG, during this two-year stint, the Giants' offensive strike rate would have been much stronger.
It would also be logical to suggest that by inserting Franklin into a youthful forward line, any possible heat on their three other forward options would have become secondary.
During the 2014 and 2015 seasons, Jeremy Cameron, Jonathon Patton and Toby Greene recorded 27.1% of their club's total goals, as well as 32.83% of their marks within the arc.
Now, if โBuddy' were acting as the lightening rod from 2014 onwards, this trio's share of the scoreboard may have fluctuated, but you can be certain that they would have been marked by lesser defenders.
Another quick aside is that Cameron โ the pedagogue, not the spearhead โ would have deployed a trio of talls in his forward line well before currently successful sides led by Luke Beveridge and Simon Goodwin.
Despite these aforementioned reasons, it is a challenge to truly pin the tail on exactly how many majors Franklin would have across his career had he joined the Giants, but if this attacking band was still slotting the sticks and cranking tunes together today, it is no stretch to suggest that Leon Cameron would own a career coaching win-rate of higher than 54.66% and the club's barren trophy case could well be displaying something.
But when exactly would these theoretical premierships have been plucked?
SEE ALSO: What if Stephen Dank was never contacted?
Between the start of 2016 and the end of 2019, the Giants fell at the Preliminary Final hurdle twice, in the Semis once and of course, at the very final jump in the Grand Final just two short years ago.
Even though Franklin's injection would have made little difference against the Tigers in 2017 and 2019, had โBud' been involved in the involved in the remaining pair of GWS losses in September, then the results could well have been reversed.
In the 2016 Prelim' against the Bulldogs, Leon Cameron's percussion went down to the premiership Pups by one straight kick. When you consider that Franklin averaged more than three goals against the Dogs that season, this meagre deficit could well have been erased.
Two years later in the Semi-Final against the โPies, the Giants went down by 10-points at the MCG, and as the former Hawk bagged a haul of 6.4 against the same side just a month before the finals kicked off, banking on the scoreboard reading positively for the Giants had he worn one of their guernseys is not outside the realms of possibility.
Whether or not the competition's babies would have grown up and graduated in these seasons is hard to say, but with these factors in mind, interesting cases can certainly be tabled.
As we all know, Franklin didn't sign with the Giants nearly eight years ago, but had he chosen Parramatta over Double Bay, his current abode and goal tally may have been negligibly smaller, however, these aforesaid arguments suggest that the real estate on his alternative mantel would have been a lot more cramped.
