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Liam Anthony of North Melbourne is tackled by Andrew Embley of the Eagles during the AFL Round 03 match between the North Melbourne Kangaroos v West Coast Eagles at Etihad Stadium, Melbourne.
When the AFL expands to 18 teams in 2012, questions over scheduling will become more of a dilemma for the league, with a conference system one of the few options available to balance fairness and marketability in its draw.
The current system of 16 teams playing 22 rounds obviously has the flaw of creating an imbalance where some teams are forced to play stronger opponents twice in a year.
The AFL won’t condense the season to 17 matches, each team playing each other once, as some, such as the AFL Players’ Association, have suggested for obvious fiscal reasons, while expanding so each team plays each other home and away would extend the regular season to 34 weeks plus finals, which obviously isn’t possible.
One option is a conference system in which the competition is split into two different divisions, with teams in their own division playing each other home and away in addition to playing teams in the other division once.
It makes sense. Every team plays each other at least once, there is regularity in terms of which teams you play twice, and the season would be extended to a manageable 25 home and away rounds.
But deciding on how teams are split into the two conferences poses a huge dilemma.
In America, where the conference system is widely used, there is the easy distinction that can be made by geography. For example, in the NBA, the Eastern and Western conferences are easily split by the North American landmass.
For the AFL however, being heavily weighted in Melbourne, this poses some problems.
At first sight the obvious option appears to be to split the conferences into Victorian and non-Victorian (although, with ten Victorian teams and eight non-Victorian teams, one of the Victorian teams would be forced to the dark side) divisions.
But while this would retain the AFL’s valuable Melbourne blockbusters, it would be woefully unfair to the non-Victorian clubs, who would have to travel to Perth, Queensland, Adelaide and Sydney twice each, while the Victorian teams would rarely have to leave the state, possibly only having to travel four or five times when they play teams from the other conference in away fixtures – unless it’s decided that the Victorian teams must play the non-Victorian conference teams away, guaranteeing each of them must leave Melbourne at least eight times each while compensating the non-Victorian conference with more home games for all their extra travel (did you get all that?).
But the fairer option is mixing up the Victorian and interstate teams.
Again, there can be no real geographical basis for the divisional split, therefore, and they would be ad hoc creations to cater for fairness while trying to retain traditional rivalries.
But while Collingwood and Essendon, Carlton and Richmond and the other traditional Victorian rivals could be grouped into the same conference, the non-Victorian rivals shouldn’t really be aligned together.
West Coast and Fremantle, for example, would surely need to be split into separate conferences so there is an even balance of trips to Perth for the rest of the teams. For the sake of fairness, the same should apply for Adelaide-Port Power, Brisbane-Gold Coast and Sydney-Greater Western Sydney.
This, however, limits the AFL’s blockbuster fixture options. If the likes of the Eagles and Dockers were split into two separate conferences, then West Australian fans would only see one derby per season.
Figuring out who goes into which conference and appeasing the demands of each club will be an extremely difficult task for the AFL.
The conference system also shouldn’t be flexible and ever changing. If rivalries and meaning are going to be developed in the two conferences, then it needs time to settle. If the teams in each conference are changed each season, perhaps using some sort of seeding system, then it would take a lot longer for fans of the game to embrace the conference system and the rivalries within that.
So while a conference system appears to be the way to go in the next expansion phase, there remains the scheduling dilemma for the AFL in balancing blockbuster fixtures with fairness, let alone deciding the make up of the conferences.