Chris Bryan of Collingwood evades Bachar Houli of Essendon during the NAB Cup Match between the Collingwood Magpies and the Essendon Bombers at the Docklands Stadium. Slattery Images
At the risk of sounding like a broken record (especially on the verge of the actual footy season), the AFL’s pre-season continues to have a clouded future. AFL’s Chief Executive Andrew Demetriou’s latest comments confirm that, but also hint at a radical future for the pre-season with a ‘Twenty20-esque’ appeal.
Speaking at the annual AFL captains get-together last week, Demetriou made it clear that the AFL’s head body hadn’t made any decisions about the future of the pre-season.
“It is certainly something we’re looking at because when we go to 18 teams in 2012 we’ll obviously have to work whether we’re going to play 22 or 23 or 24 rounds,” he said.
“In the event that we have a longer season, it would make it unlikely we’d have a pre-season competition, but we’d have to have some form of matches.
“So that’s the sort of things we’ll be working through this year and it’ll be an interesting exercise.”
Indeed, it is an exercise which will be widely debated and, speaking to the Sunday Herald Sun, Demetriou implored fans, pundits, scholars and basically anybody to offer suggestions about the format of the pre-season.
“If anyone has any ideas, I’d love to see them,” he said.
This certainly opens the topic up for public discussion and involvement.
It also reveals that the AFL are finding the answers to this problem quite difficult to unlock, although it is good to see they are transparent enough to acknowledge that.
It is, after all, quite a complicated issue, as the recent comments of varied opinion from a number of leading AFL personalities has shown.
A crucial point, though, is that AFL footy needs a pre-season and it is good to see Demetriou acknowledge this, claiming its existence was non-negotiable.
The players need some form of conditioning before the real stuff begins, and how often do we hear there’s no better way to build up match fitness than by playing matches.
Therefore, the format of the pre-season is what is up for debate.
This is why Demetriou’s comments in the Herald Sun were so interesting, as he hinted at the potential for a radical change in format.
“I think you have to congratulate cricket,” he said, about the summer sport’s success with Twenty20.
“I just think in this day and age (you have) Gen Y and people wanting everything quickly, not wanting to sit around for hours. Something shorter… is quite clever. Whether a variation of that coming into football happens, I don’t know.”
Twenty20’s version of Aussie Rules is hard to put your finger on, but it appears an oddly radical inclination from Demetriou.
In some ways, it lacks appeal, considering some of the gimmicks the AFL have introduced in pre-season, such as the tired ‘super-goal’ rule, which have at times detracted from the game.
But a condensed version of footy (with normal rules in tact) mightn’t be all bad in the pre-season.
And perhaps a decent reference point would be the Lightning Premiership, which the AFL held in the competition’s centenary year back in 1996.
All sixteen teams got together for three days of footy, playing games consisting of two seventeen-and-a-half minute halves out at Waverley Park, reminiscent of your typical state carnival. It also hinted at a Twenty20-type bash.
The idea of there being a ‘winner’ at the end of it might appeal, too.
Just compare the interest in the NAB Cup (which ascertains a winner) as opposed to the NAB Challenge (which is essentially just a bunch of practice games), which some are suggesting should be the future of the pre-season.
In the grand scheme of things, there’s plenty for the AFL to weigh up, but the key point is there needs to be a pre-season for the players’ sake.
For footy’s sake, the pre-season plays a role in generating hype and talk about AFL, whilst rival codes get underway and the NAB Cup, despite its criticism, didn’t do that too badly.
Finding a replacement to do a similar job won’t be easy, but Demetriou appears keen to explore a plethora of diverse, and perhaps radical, ideas.
It’ll be interesting to hear a few suggestions.
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