Have you ever actually been on an aeroplane? Do you understand that its not exactly the best place to relax from strenuous physical activity?
Do you know that teams always fly down prior to the actual day of the game, meaning their preparation routines are more disrupted than the opposition?
Have you ever noticed how poorly teams often perform on the second week on the road in a row?
Do you realise that the AFL recognises this, and never schedules either of the Western Australian teams to play interstate in consecutive weeks?

Its a stupid system, and its evidently only supported by people who deny the obvious.

Dammit, I’m going to be a dinosaur if I want. I refuse to accept extra time for draws in home & away regular season matches.

And you’re asking me the odds on draws???

I was merely being uber-cynical about why the NRL adopted ‘golden point’ extra time for poor old home & away games.

Getting rid of draws would do a couple of not-so-good things:
- 10 more minutes of football can mean more injuries and fatigue.
- Teams can get complacent late in the game, expecting extra time.

Ultimately, I think there are two questions here:

Does the AFL want to pander to a few anti-traditional voices?
Does the AFL want to necessarily find a winner while screwing up the overall H&A season?

Plus, what would you do with percentage? The extra time can turn a legitimately drawn game into a blowout.

If the NRL golden point is about betting (which it probably isn’t, they have two draws so far this year), then it should be just as easy to have draw stakes like most EPL games employ.

I reckon the NRL system of ‘golden point’ time on for home & away matches is stupid. I’m sure this is all designed to satisfy the sporting markets.

Sad when you bend to what the ‘bettors’ want. As opposed to ‘bettees’, the poor suckers who do their dough every weekend. I don’t mind having a bet, I just don’t want to be dictated to by those guys.

As I said, leave extra time for the finals matches. That’s when you require it.

What Pippinu said, of what I said!!!

It’s only when you get to finals time that you use extra time to avoid draws/ties.

Why unnecessarily complicate life?

The AFL held a lightening premiership tourney pre-season in 1996 (the centenary of the VFL year) – it might well have been part of that.

For those who don’t know, in 1948 we had our first ever draw in a VFL grand final:

Essendon, who topped the ladder, kicked an incredible 7:27 to draw with Melbourne 10:9.

Melbourne won the replay the following week.

As I say, 112 years of a goal being worth 6 points – end of story.

In my opinion FIFA dropped the ball by getting rid of golden-goal – extra time in the World Cup final should be “first goal wins,” and keep going for hours until someone scores. After all, the players don’t need to be fresh for the next round – that doesn’t happen in earnest for another 47 months.

The NFL has a long series of tiebreaker rules for standings, with the 15th and final one being a coin flip.
In all honesty, percentage is a great way to decide tiebreaker – but in the rare case that it doesn’t work out (or if you want to reshuffle the tiebreakers), results between teams tied on the ladder, percentage in those games, and goal percentages are great ways to never have shootout or coin toss decide anything.

Regarding shoot out rules I dont remember the year but I think there was a year where going into Round 22 Geelong and Essnedon were vying for 2nd on the ladder (could be 1995). Now thier % was very close and I think that going into that Round it was possible, although very improbable that they would finish up on the same points and same %. The journalists looked through the rules and found that should this occur a 50m penalty shoot-out of sorts would be required to determine the 2nd place. This was written back of course in the VFL days when teams could just lob up to a suburban ground on a Monday night and have the shoot-out. Following the 1995 situation I think the AFL re-wrote the rules for 1996 and beyond. It was in the press that week but of course did not eventuate as the results required in Round 22 were very unlikely to occur.
PLease don’t take the above as fact cause I’m working from memory

agreed – I’ve often said that perhaps the one thing the AFL could do – is suggest that most goals will win. i.e. the game IS after all about kicking goals (and not own goals, or heading or scoring tries/touchdowns etc).

So, with goals being so specific as per the rules. THen, behinds would only be used to break a dead lock on goals.

I just assume that people have a natural tendancy to ‘tally’ as they go.

After all – in the Rugby codes, initially Trys didn’t return a score, and then, got used for a short while to break a dead lock if goals were level.

SO, not just the Gaelic lads toying with the concept.

At any rate, at least this wouldn’t have made the goal-to-behind ratio seem so arbitrary. Behinds would still get tallied, they just wouldn’t be amounting to any goals.