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Time to expand AFL Finals to ten teams

fatboi new author
Roar Rookie
1st October, 2013
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fatboi new author
Roar Rookie
1st October, 2013
28

The 2013 AFL season offered us a once-in-a-full-moon scenario where the battle for a finals berth extended to the ninth placed team.

Admittedly, there were still technically only eight teams competing in the finals due to Essendon’s disqualification but it presented an exciting run in to the finals for about four more clubs.

What if every year from now on, the ninth and tenth placed teams on the ladder at the end of the home and away season qualified for the finals?

AFL FINALS FORMAT EXPLAINED: HOW DOES THE AFL FINALS SYSTEM WORK?

The idea of an expanded finals series is nothing new. The AFL to their credit have thought about a ten-team finals format already.

According to their preferred format, an extra week would be added at the start of finals where the teams finishing seventh to tenth would play off in sudden death elimination finals while the top six would be afforded a bye or rest.

Week two of finals simply reverts to the current format.

The advantages of an expanded ten-team finals series would be that more teams would be in finals contention for longer, thus minimising the number of dead rubbers at the last rounds of the season, not to mention the extra revenue it would bring to the AFL.

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While the AFL’s ten-team finals format seems reasonable, I would say it is incomplete. I would propose an improved version, that would create more games and more excitement for the AFL, clubs and fans.

Let’s have a finals series of five weeks, which is an addition to the current four-week format.

I will keep the concept of having teams seventh to tenth playing off in sudden death elimination finals, with the seventh and eighth teams awarded home finals thus ensuring advantages for those teams.

Unlike the AFL concept, I would not give the top six teams a rest in week one.

Instead, only the two top teams (first and second) will be afforded a week one rest. They have been the best two teams over the course of the season and deserves the extra advantage over teams three and four, let alone the sixth team.

In week one of the finals, I would stage qualifying matches for the teams third to sixth where obviously third plays sixth and fourth plays fifth.

The two winners are then awarded the right to challenge teams one and two in the second week of finals for the right to leapfrog into a hosted Preliminary Final.

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Meanwhile, the two losers would continue into next week hosting finals against the two winners of the seventh to 10th placed knock out finals.

This crucial difference in format provides the AFL with two more cut-throat finals and I feel sufficiently rewards the two most outstanding teams in the season with a deserved bye in week one.

By week two, the finals returns to a more familiar format as we are left with eight teams; where the top two ‘seeds’ join in and play the next two best challengers and another cut throat elimination final beckons for the four lower teams.

Week three will remain as is as will week four (preliminary finals) and week five (Grand Final).

I believe expanding the AFL Finals to five weeks and ten participating clubs will be the next important advancement for the competition.

The majority of opposition will argue that the current format is fine so why fix it? But the benefits to the competition and all stakeholders are enormous.

Four extra matches in the finals will beef up the coffers of the AFL. The advantages for participating clubs are substantial also.

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Not only will it give two more teams (ninth and tenth) the honour participating in the finals but it will ensure every season is played out until the very last week of the home and away rounds as multitudes of teams, perhaps up to 15 battle it out for a finals spot.

Once we reach the finals, the top six clubs are all guaranteed at least one home final each.

The top two clubs in the season are provided an incredible advantage over the others with the potential for two weeks off out of a five-week finals campaign and is richly deserved. There is just so much to gain, surely this is a no-brainer for the AFL?

On a side note, if the AFL wants to ensure the fairest and even playing field for all 18 clubs in the competition, it would do well to restructure the home and away season.

The format I would advocate would be a 21-game season consisting of:

1. 17 home and away matches against every other team in the league.
2. 1 match to be designated ‘rivalry round’ to ensure derbies are played twice a year.
3. 3 more ‘double up’ matches to be determined by random selection from ‘zones.’

Clubs are divided into three zones determined by finishing position from the previous season (1-6, 7-12, 13-18). Every team simply plays three teams from the three zones to complete a 21-match fixture.

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So there you go. An exciting expanded finals series on the back of a fair balanced home-and-away season fixture. Attention AFL, are you reading this?

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