(Scott Andrawartha is a BPL Citizen Journalist.)

When I first heard the concept of an AFL team from the western suburbs of Sydney, I thought it was a disastrous afterthought with little justification other than to give the league an even 18 teams and lock away 'the bye' for good.

The Gold Coast Suns (or GC17 as they were known in their infancy) had been slowly developed and formed through clever marketing, multi-lateral corporate and government support and AFL executive foresight.

And the time for Queensland expansion seemed correct: the NRL had its Titans, the A-League had representation in Gold Coast United, but the AFL almost seemed slow in getting a foothold in the Gold Coast market.

In hindsight, though, the organisational strength of the Suns' franchise, at this point in time, appears stronger for its developmental delay. 

Compare the Gold Coast case study to that of the comparatively rhymeless and reasonless Greater Western Sydney "experiment".

Announced as a concrete project shortly after GC17's take-off, GWS came into being after years of wishy-washy attitudes towards a second Sydney team.

It will enter the competition a year after the Suns' debut, without any TAC Cup game time, very little VFL standard football to harden the youngsters, and very little in the way of youth signings (or not that we know of, anyway.) All this, in a rugby league heartland, has led to fears that it might become an expensive disaster.

Luckily, GWS has Kevin Sheedy at the helm which helps ease a few jangled nerves among the top brass. 

While critics of these expansion clubs bemoan the recent floggings of teams such as Melbourne, Port Adelaide and Gold Coast, and blame the dilution of talent in the AFL draft pool, it now appears the expansion can actually be justified by these recent blowouts.

The AFL needs to expand its reach into different sports and regions to gather up more athletes as the game itself becomes faster, where careers are shortened and injuries become more devastating and commonplace. Development of new markets is necessary to sustain the AFL's perpetual growth.  

This theory of development also illustrates why it's unlikely Tasmania and the Northern Territory will ever get professional franchises. Apart from the commercial and population considerations of these areas (which are valid), the number of new 'recruits' to the code is relatively small: the vast majority of young men in the 15-25 year-old age bracket are already involved in the game, so - in marketing terms - there's little need to have a professional presence there. 

While the short-term forecast does suggest a few more lopsided results, tracking the data dispassionately tells us that a deeper pool of athletes will help to equalise AFL teams and lists. More concerning would be the absence of any obvious reason for the recent spate of lopsided results - that would be the time to worry.