There’s enough in all of this to ensure that we don’t look away. But along with it comes the danger of overkill. The belief that it has to be like that all the time, that the game needs to be constantly milked for the melodrama of the moment, and that the coverage can safely ignore the wider context that makes that moment matter.

As a result, cutaways when the ball is out of play – even though the game is still alive with niggle and jostle – can frustrate rather than illuminate. In the thrilling Brisbane-Richmond elimination final a couple of weeks ago at the Gabba, it seemed that almost every time the ball crossed the boundary, cutaways to the coaches watching – just watching – became the default option, a miscalculation largely adjusted in subsequent matches. Meanwhile, the action on the field was, infuriatingly, ignored. These gaps in the coverage are like the ads that interrupt the free-to-air option every time a goal is scored.

Rather than directing us towards a better appreciation of the unfolding action, this approach loosens our grasp on the ebb and flow of a game and the often-subtle strategies at work in it. One only has to compare the post-match dissections of a game (like those provided by David King and Leigh Montagna on Foxtel) to see how wider shots of the field of combat from behind the goals can be used to illuminate the patterns of play taking place on it. Those shots are usually only deployed during live coverage of a game when the fullback is putting the ball back into play.

Callers could help here, but rarely do. Sometimes they can delight us with their erudite wit, as Dennis Cometti used to (“Barlow to Bateman: the Hawks are attacking alphabetically”). But most of the time they’re either presenting the game as if they’re working on radio – describing what we can already see (and sometimes getting it wrong) – or else grating with their grammatical gaffes (James Brayshaw appears never to have encountered the word “him”, for which he’ll inevitably deploy “he”).

Sometimes they’re entertaining – as when, during the qualifying final between Melbourne and the Swans, Matthew Richardson cryptically likened the Swans’ forever-hyper Tom Papley to a Jack Russell. Or when, at another stage in the same game, even Brian Taylor saw the funny side after his excited whoop of “Here goes Sydney!” precisely coincided with a turnover that saw Melbourne take possession and move the ball forward for a goal on the siren to the Demons’ Bayley Fritsch. It must be the caller’s nightmare when something like that happens.

There are noteworthy commentators who can provide insight: among them (and in alphabetical order), Dermott Brereton, Jonathan Brown, Wayne Carey, Jason Dunstall, Gerard Healy, Luke Hodge, Jordan Lewis, Garry Lyon, Leigh Matthews, Daisy Pearce and Nick Riewoldt. But the callers mostly seem to rely on repetitions of what was said a moment or two earlier by them or someone else, cliches, statistics and more cliches, all spiced with feverish excitement, real or feigned. And, generally, they’re more likely to provide distraction than illumination.

While the grand final awaits, though, the AFL already sees itself as the big winner after signing its seven-year, $4.5 billion deal with Seven and Foxtel for the rights to cover the game. Most of the talk beforehand was money talk, with the rights of the free-to-air viewer receiving only passing attention, along with how community clubs were going to benefit from the influx of cash to the AFL. But if the wheelers and dealers had really cared about you and me, they’d also have looked long and hard at the quality of the coverage and what can be done to make it better.

Live coverage of the AFL 2022 grand final is on Seven, Saturday, September 24.