To have reached a preliminary final in that time is success enough – in a competition full of talent and services to embellish it but to go one step further would be extraordinary.

Either way there has been already plenty of prognostication that such an achievement could only be regarded as having been manufactured. But that is way too simple a thesis.

The AFL competition is comprised of 18 company outfits each with expenditure budgets in excess of $30million per year. Each of them wants to win the premiership.

Some know they have no chance at the moment and have strategic plans and key performance indicators focussed on the future. But more than half reckon they can do it now.

Arguably this season has provided the most even competition amongst the top half in years. Few pundits will have predicted even three weeks ago let alone at the season opening, the identity of the grand final combatants - whoever it now is that will line up against the often written-off Sydney Swans.

Yes it is certainly arguable that GWS is in the mix because of the advantages it has had in securing young talent as well as established stars.

But that would have come to nought unless the right recipe had been applied. No-one else wanted Kevin Sheedy, so it cannot be claimed that having the wily old mentor was some special deal. Nor did any other club want Leon Cameron as its head coach. Collingwood was more than happy to let Heath Shaw go to get its hands on one of GWS’s talented youngsters, Taylor Adams.

Gold Coast had similar opportunities and didn’t take them in quite the same way. GWS success in 2016 is more about the way the club has gone about it than the raw talent of its young stars.

A way better example of manufactured success was Great Britain’s medal haul at the Paralympic Games in Rio. The British public embraced elite sport for those with a disability with a passion. It was easy to justify significant investment in elite para athletes from national lottery funds. But the way those funds have been used to identity and acquire new talent has been questioned by international rivals and British athletes themselves. But there can be little argument that it has delivered significant results.

In Australia next year there will be perhaps as manufactured an outcome in sport as has yet been seen when the AFL’s national women’s league is launched. 

For sure success of the Giants is the result of many more planets aligning than simply a plan.