Essendon was exposed as a fraudulent finalist on Friday night.

Now, this is not to say Hawthorn, Port or Sydney, who just missed out on the finals, were any more worthy of a place in the finals. Clearly, they were not. The Bombers played some exciting footy in patches in 2009 but there is no doubting that this was a year when a top seven would have been more than sufficient.

Losing as badly as the Bombers did on Friday night is a mixed blessing. On the one hand, TV ratings figures indicate that 1.022 million people around Australia, including 491,000 in Melbourne saw the Bombers have their pants pulled down by Adelaide. That's a lot of people.

On the other hand, because of the late finish, the Saturday papers reported the match, but not a whole lot more, and by the time Sunday came along, the focus was all on the two finals played on Saturday.

So there has been precious little analysis in the papers, particularly that published in Spencer Street, which casts a critical eye on the Bombers. Coach Matthew Knights hasn't really been called to account for not taking even one recognised ruckman into the match or for his bizarre selection of Irish recruit Michael Quinn.

Nor has there been any castigation of the Bombers for having three players rubbed out on the eve of the finals (the skipper and the no.1 ruckman among them) or for having another two players reported and subsequently suspended against Adelaide.

Had it been another club, say Hawthorn, the ‘bad boy' headlines would have been large and loud and the ‘Age Experts' as they have long been known, would have been queueing up to whack that club over the head.

But when five Bombers are suspended over the course of a fortnight, or when their coach fails as dismally as any coach in recent finals history, there was hardly a peep.

Alastair Clarkson, Campbell Brown and Jeff Kennett both individually and collectively did themselves and their club no favours with their words and their deeds in the minutes and days following Hawthorn's round 22 loss to the Bombers. Their ill-considered remarks were like manna from heaven to many in the footy media who for reasons best known to themselves, don't much like the Hawks.

But many of those leading lights of the football media, so quick to lay into the Hawks a week ago, have been strangely silent when it comes to the Bombers.

To borrow a quote from the famous Cadbury Chocolate TV commercials - why is this so?

Disclosure: Ashley Browne does media work for the Hawthorn Football Club, however the views expressed here are not those of the club.