TWENTY years ago, as remembered last week, Port Adelaide and Brisbane played in the first AFL grand final without a Victorian-based team (even if Brisbane had emotional ties to VFL founding club Fitzroy).

The AFL - with a South Australian, Wayne Jackson, as chief executive emphasising "non-Victorian" rather than "interstate" as a club descriptor - had a truly neutral setting for that historic grand final at the MCG. (Although, Brisbane had the advantage of experiencing the three previous grand finals at the G and 12 matches compared to Port Adelaide's five at the game's cradle from 2001-2004, during the grand four-year cycle of that rivalry).

It was as close as the AFL could get to living its underlying philosophy of "fairness and equality" in a national competition built off a Victorian base (or bias, as some critics put it).

Expansion to ensure each mainland State had at least two AFL teams - and thereby an AFL game each weekend - along with the challenges of building the sport's base north of the Ron Barassi line that divides Victoria and the NSW-Queensland corridor has eroded that principle of "fairness and equality".

As has the romantic link to the father-son rule first written in the VFL in 1949 and refashioned in 1997, 2001, 2007 and 2015 and most probably again this year.

There also is the skewering of "fairness and equality" with the northern academies that allow Sydney, Greater Western Sydney, Gold Coast and Brisbane to develop - and hold - local talent to create local heroes ... and wins in the battle for young and old hearts on playing fields usually dominated by rugby and at the turnstiles. Kieran Jack's preference to play for Sydney in the AFL rather than follow as a father-son to the rugby league fields where his father Gary was a hero for Balmain, NSW and Australia is a major gain for Australian football.

But the price for all this is an AFL national competition today that resembles Australia's history on the railways where each State (then colony) chose differing gauges - and no one train could travel from coast to coast without changing rolling stock.

The AFL today has - by the clubs' count - at least 27 imbalances that have dismantled the principle of "fairness and equality".

The most noted discord is with the placement of the AFL grand final at the MCG, now locked to the Melbourne venue until 2059 - and gaining more desire from Victorian teams to call the G their home.

Sydney wants the grand final to become a best-of-three series to counter the Victorian advantage at the G. Club president Andrew Pridham notes a $40 million pot of gold is available with extra grand finals.

Now Gold Coast - while defending its right to hold local talent developed at its academy - has put forward the radical proposal of stripping Victorian teams of home-State advantage to any elimination or qualifying final played against a non-Victorian team. Here is a submission that screams "paradox".

In Perth, West Coast and Fremantle - frustrated by the clear-cut burden that demands long-haul travel for their players every second week in a league challenged by the tyranny of distance in the big island continent - want the lopsided AFL home-and-away fixture resolved. Their concept of demanding Victorian teams transfer home games to Perth to even the travel burden is, let's say, novel. But ...

Solving the refit of "competitive balance" - the alternative theme for "fairness and equality" - by adding more imbalances does not serve the AFL nor the game for any betterment at all.

In Adelaide, the task of player development at the second tier - in the SANFL league competition - is not on parity with the eastern clubs playing to different recruiting rules for top-up players in the expanded VFL series. The answer with a national second-tier competition is complicated by not only needing to fund such a "reserves" league but also to maintain development goals in State leagues such as the SANFL. The national draft - the pathway to the AFL - cannot be weakened.

A notable absentee from Saturday's reunion of the 2004 Port Adelaide premiership heroes at Adelaide Oval was Josh Mahoney, the new executive in the AFL football operations division. His agenda is full in finding the path to the AFL's original concept of "fairness and equality". It was easier getting a kick against the Scott twins in the Brisbane defence during the 2004 grand final ...