The challenge of sustained success: how much roar do the Lions have left?

You need shrewd planning for the here and now as well as the future.

You need the best coaching and players. And you need plenty of luck.

Sometimes all those elements come together and the payoff is in a premiership.

On rare occasions, that might be turned into more than one flag.

But sustained success, particularly given the equalisation measures of a salary cap and draft is a sort of football utopia.

It's why there's such admiration for Geelong and Sydney, currently occupying the top two spots on the AFL ladder.

The Cats, written off once again during pre-season after failing to reach finals last year, are set to once more be part of September for an 18th time in 21 years, a period which has yielded four premierships, six grand final appearances and 13 top-four finishes.

The Swans, meanwhile, will almost certainly play finals for a 24th time in 29 seasons, having played in a grand final seven times.

These two clubs have been great clubs for so long now that the formula for success is as good as embedded in their cultural DNA.

Which means that on the rare occasions there's a backwards step or two, there's no panicked overreaction, nor impatience, just a methodical determination to go back to the well using the well-established template.

Other clubs less familiar with consistent success on the field in the modern era find the going harder maintaining it.

Which makes these interesting times for both last year's grand finalists Collingwood and Brisbane.

The Lions are right now being tested like never before since Chris Fagan took over as coach in 2017.

Five top four finishes finally yielded a grand final berth last year and almost a premiership.

But could that perhaps have led to a sub-conscious expectation that in 2024 the natural conclusion of a long journey, in the manner of a long-awaited flag, was just going to happen?

Certainly, one factor Brisbane had going for it last year but which lately seems in short supply is luck on the injury front.

The Lions bought in Adelaide key defender Tom Doedee to play a major role but lost him for the year without even having him pull on the jumper.

The loss of last year's finals sensation Keidean Coleman to a serious knee injury has also been a crushing blow.

Now Zac Bailey is out for month, too.

Thirteenth spot on the ladder at 2-5 is a long way from the glories of last September.

If it all continues to go pear-shaped and Brisbane doesn't even end up playing finals this year, will the Lions have the resilience to knuckle down to the task and go again?

Or will a promising but still unfulfilled era be officially over?

Rebounding from a poor year might in some ways be as big a test of Brisbane as a club and Fagan as a coach as buttering up this year might have proved had the Lions kicked just one more goal in last year's grand final.

And what of the team that did prevail on grand final day?

At three wins and a draw from its seven games, Collingwood is batting at 50 per cent.

But the general consensus that the Pies were "back in town" so to speak after running right over the top of Port Adelaide has been tempered a lot after their perhaps fortuitous Anzac Day draw with Essendon.

The Pies have a different set of problems to their grand final opponent, and perhaps more than some of their predecessors.

The most obvious is motivation, and the amount of cajoling required to get a playing group which has achieved the ultimate hungry enough to attempt a repeat.

Which, obviously, is common to all reigning premiers.

What isn't always, however, is age.

And in 2024, Collingwood has officially the oldest playing list in the competition, with nine players aged 30 or older, and four more than 33.

The mortality of the seemingly ageless Scott Pendlebury has been more obvious so far this season, ditto Steele Sidebottom, while Jeremy Howe is about to turn 34, and Mason Cox is struggling to have the sort of impact of his ruck cohort Darcy Cameron.

Tom Mitchell is another struggling to recapture the sort of form he produced when it mattered most last year, on grand final day.

And with the form worries of individuals centred around the on-ball set-ups, Collingwood is struggling around the stoppages.

Young Harvey Harrison added some life to the Magpie mix when subbed into the game last week, but Collingwood doesn't yet appear to have a large roll call of ambitious kids hammering at the door for selection.

And you can't really blame the Pies for having focused primarily on the here and now instead of the future these past couple of years while it was so close to a premiership.

Now that mountain has been climbed, can Collingwood conjure another trip to the summit in 2024 with so much ground already to make up?

It would be some achievement from here.

And perhaps, too, another reminder, if we needed one, about how amazing Geelong and Sydney, two perennial AFL powers, have been these past few decades.