There's a new level of evenness among the various flag contenders this season, too, for a couple of reasons.

One is that the pre-finals bye in place since 2016 has diluted the advantage the double chance the top four teams once had via an extra week's rest and recovery, the Western Bulldogs winning a flag from seventh in 2016, Greater Western Sydney reaching a grand final from sixth in 2019.

But the other factor, though, is a massive premiership wildcard specific to this season. And its name is Richmond.

The Tigers are again building a full head of steam towards a serious tilt at what would be a fourth AFL premiership in six seasons.

You wouldn't have thought it possible just three weeks ago when they had won only one of their past five games and were 10th on the ladder. But that was a very fine line which included a draw and three defeats by a combined nine points.

The second-half comeback against Brisbane which followed has woken the sleeping giant. And there wouldn't be a team in the top eight not now looking very anxiously over their shoulders at the yellow and black surge coming from Punt Road.

Richmond has upped the ante and is again playing to a level it hasn't reached arguably since taking out the 2020 flag.

In midfield, Dion Prestia is starring, skipper Trent Cotchin has got back to his best, and there's still a huge September wildcard in Dustin Martin to be added to the mix.

But things have changed most dramatically on the scoreboard. Richmond's famous fanatical forward half pressure is back to its best with the likes of Maurice Rioli pivotal to that improvement. So has been the introduction of the energetic Noah Cumberland. And Tom Lynch is in superb nick with 16 goals in the past three games.

You could have had considerable odds only a month or so ago about both Rioli and Cumberland becoming critical parts of the equation. But Cumberland has averaged 2.5 goals per game over a half-dozen appearances now.

And Rioli's influence on that famed Richmond pressure on the opponent has already become profound.

Prior to last week, Champion Data had Rioli leading the AFL for points created from turnovers forced by pressure acts from just a dozen games this season. The next four players on those rankings all had fewer points but from eight more games. Rioli's pressure has been that good.

The cumulative impact is that the Tigers are hitting the scoreboard a lot harder, having topped 100 points in each of the past three games after passing that mark just once in the previous seven games.

If this is ringing a few bells for people, it was a similar story late in Richmond's famous drought-breaking 2017.

That year, the Tigers' capacity to turn that pressure into tangible scoreboard returns went to a whole new level at precisely the right moment, topping the 100-point mark four times in their last five games, including the preliminary and grand finals, after having managed to do so only once in the preceding nine games.

Some new faces similarly injected some more spark into the line-up, Jacob Townsend, like Cumberland, becoming a surprising new source of goals, and Jack Graham, like Rioli now, helping Richmond ramp up the pressure.

Which isn't to suggest, of course, that 2022 will go the same way. The Tigers are doing it harder defensively these days, without the class and experience of the likes of David Astbury and Bachar Houli, and Dylan Grimes' hamstring issues haven't helped, the defensive general expected to miss the first week of finals at least.

But Richmond's renewed scoreboard potency has it sitting second on the rankings for points scored, behind only Brisbane. The Tigers never ranked any higher than fifth in any of those premiership years of 2017, 19 or 2020. Who's to say they can't climb the mountain for a fourth time a different way this time? They know what it takes. They're hitting form at exactly the right moment again.

And at the very least, those top teams when the final eight is sorted out once and for all come Sunday will have every reason to fear a very large presence looming just a little lower on the ladder.