The AFL will stage a match next weekend which will be remarkable – and unprecedented – for the simple reason that neither side involved, Carlton nor Melbourne, wants to win. It will turn on its head every previously held notion about sport at the elite level – primarily, that teams take the playing arena with an express and fervent desire for victory – because the incentives for losing this particular contest are so much greater.

Such is the flawed nature of the AFL’s priority draft pick system that Sunday’s match has become a Loser Takes All extravaganza.

All that has to happen now is for Melbourne and Carlton to somehow find a credible way not to win. Expect any day now their best players to start going down with a range of hitherto unknown ailments.

At stake for both clubs is access to some of the best young players in the national draft and, not to put too fine a point on it, the chance to fast-track their rebuilding program.

Melbourne is in 14th position with four wins for the season; Carlton is 15th and also on four wins. They play each other at the MCG on Sunday in the final home-and-away game of the season, in a match that will now attract every bit as much attention as the key contests earlier in the weekend that will determine the make-up of the final eight.

If Carlton lose, they benefit from the AFL’s well-meaning but impractical policy to reward with a priority pick those teams who win fewer than five games in two consecutive seasons. This will mean the Blues can pick up before the first round of the draft the best young player in the country – probably Northern Knights ruckman Matthew Kreuzer, and thereby remedy one of their long-standing deficiencies.

If Carlton cannot avoid winning, their fifth victory for the season will rule them ineligible for any priority pick, and they would take their place in the draft queue at No.3 behind Richmond and Melbourne.

For their part, Melbourne needs to lose to ensure it gets three draft choices in the top 20, compared to one otherwise. By winning fewer than five games in just one season, it would benefit from a priority pick after the first round of the draft.

In light of this extraordinary situation, all the old Vince Lombardi-isms – the ones so beloved by sporting coaches around the world – become redundant. ‘’Winners never quit and quitters never win.’’ ‘’Winning is a habit. Unfortunately, so is losing’’. And the most famous of them all: ‘’Winning isn’t everything, it’s the only thing.’’

Don’t know what the old Green Bay coach would make of the goings-on at the MCG on Sunday but he’d probably throw his clipboard and headset into the air and stride out of the ground, muttering darkly: ”Show me a good loser, and I’ll show you a loser.’’ Or maybe even: ”Once you learn to quit, it becomes a habit.’’

Even Shakespeare would have found it difficult to describe the scenario. ”To the loser, the spoils’’ somehow doesn’t have quite the same ring to it.

AFL chief executive Andrew Demetriou has pooh-poohed suggestions that teams would ever deliberately go out to lose. The players and coaching staff are too competitive to ever lie down, he says. Tanking was a figment of the media’s ”delusional’’ imagination.

Perhaps the sight of gleeful supporters – and, behind closed doors, club officials – celebrating a defeat on Sunday evening will convince him the current rules are indeed flawed and desperately in need of review.