Ah, decisions. Life would be so much easier this week if Brian Smith coached the Dragons, Wayne Bennett, Dean Young and Mark Gasnier went over to the Roosters, Stephen Milne played for the Pies and Harry O'Brien for St Kilda.

When you're passionately neutral in grand final week, you feel a bit like an independent in a hung parliament. You have to pick a side, but it has to be the lesser of two evils, so you're motivated more by aversion to what you hate than attraction to what you like.

It would be simpler if all the villains were in the one camp and all the heroes in the other. For a Sydney-based neutral league fan who is not possessed of undue sadism, it's impossible not to cheer for the Dragons this Sunday. Since 1979 their fans have suffered, suffered, and suffered again. And again and again. Five grand final losses, is it? And even those - they were usually beaten by better teams - can't have hurt as much as the early to mid 2000s, when year after year the Dragons' on-paper champions gummed up like papier mache and never made grand final day. They were the airheads of the league, all talent from the neck down. Then, add in the clutch of semi-final disappointments for a very good Illawarra Steelers team in the early 1990s, and you have a Russian novel full of tragedy.

But....it's hard not to love watching them go down again. I don't know why that is. (Maybe see note on sadism above.) But this year, unfortunately, there are lots of reasons to cheer against them. Wayne Bennett, with his smug shrunken head taciturnity, has won enough. And they play such a goddamn boring game. They biff, they barge, they kick, they wait. They're very good at not dropping the ball. That's the great legacy Bennett's Dragons have brought to the league: excellence in not dropping the ball.

By contrast, look at those wonderful, effervescent Roosters. Pearce and Carney, who can set up tries from anywhere. The accuracy of their long passing to flying centres and wingers is a wonder to behold. Braith Anasta may be slow and limited in skill and overpraised in most regards, and the length of his head may be disconcertingly out of proportion to the shortness of his legs, but he's also the smartest player in the NRL and has an admirable gift for knowing the telling play, the point-scorer. Every team would love to have an Anasta. And finally there's Brian Smith. Enough said, really. Nicest coach around, good loser, appalling grand final record - if there is any justice, he will win this one with his remarkable, sparkling, dangerous young team.

But....you can't go for the Roosters, can you? Can you really? It's the air of entitlement. It's the mafia of their media fans, the Ray Warrens, the Gus Goulds, the Danny Weidlers, the Freddy Fittlers - nothing against those people, there are just too many of them. It's - bugger it, it's Mark McInnes beaming away in his tricoloured scarf, remarkably brave considering the trauma of having been sexually harassed by publicists and other female staff so constantly for so many years.

Good grief, for a minute there I was thinking I wanted to see the Roosters win.

Similarly, south of the border, Collingwood's grand final record has left strangely little sympathy for them. In fact it's only opened the appetite for more. But this is unfair, surely. They're a charismatic team, clearly the best in the AFL since June. And aside from Eddie McGuire, Mick Malthouse, Nick Maxwell, Alan Didak, Paul Medhurst, Scott Pendlebury and Luke Ball, there's nothing to dislike about them, no arrogance at all.

If they had Milne in there as well, they'd be perfect. And toss in Warney and Molly Meldrum in the president's box too. But life is not meant to be easy. What I'd really love to see is, after extra time this Saturday, another draw.

Okay, nobody's perfect. So in the spirit of betting on what you dread, here are my fearless predictions: Roosters by a mile, but with Brian Smith breaking his arm during over-exuberant celebrations; and Collingwood, also by a mile, with the president's private elevator collapsing after the allowable limit of head space was breached. Friends, have a fine-feathered weekend, and bring on Sunday night so the rest of us can stop eating our hearts out.