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The pre-finals bye is a good thing

Roar Guru
11th November, 2016
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Gillon Mac MC'd the AFL draft. (AAP Image/Mick Tsikas)
Roar Guru
11th November, 2016
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In the 2015 AFL fixture release, the AFL CEO Gillon McLachlan raised a curveball by creating a bye round between Round 23 and the qualifying and elimination finals for the 2016 AFL fixture.

This created a huge debate between footy fans and AFL coaches, with many believing it to be a momentum killer.

McLachlan made the bye round to stop teams from resting players in the final round of the home-and-away season. Fremantle rested eleven players against St Kilda in Round 23 in 2013, and North Melbourne and Fremantle rested nine and twelve players against Richmond and Port Adelaide respectively in 2015.

Both of Fremantle and North Melbourne had success in doing this, with Fremantle falling short by 15 points in the grand final against Hawthorn in 2013, in which that flag would be the first of three consecutive premierships for Hawthorn.

North Melbourne and Fremantle fell short by 25 and 27 points against West Coast and Hawthorn respectively in the 2015 preliminary finals.

He believed this was taking the meaning out of the final round of the season, which saw lower teams collecting wins against high teams with half of their best 22 not playing.

I strongly believe that the pre-finals bye round is a positive thing for the AFL, and here are three reasons why.

Firstly, having the pre-finals bye round in place creates time for players to be able to recover from injuries to be able to play in the finals. In 2016, if the bye round hadn’t of been there, it is highly unlikely that the Western Bulldogs would’ve won their first of four amazing finals wins.

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The Dogs would have had to have made to consecutive trips to Perth to play at Domain Stadium, where they lost to 16th placed Fremantle in Round 23 by 20 points. It is most likely only Jake Stringer and Jack Macrae would’ve returned for the Bulldogs, already weakening the team that beat West Coast by 47 points on the Eagles home deck.

The odds would of been against them by a higher amount, and would’ve had to have made it through to the following week against Hawthorn to have had Easton Wood, Tom Liberatore, and Jordan Roughead return.

In addition, the theory of the bye round being a ‘momentum killer’ was confirmed in 2016, when Geelong and the GWS Giants lost their home preliminary finals to Sydney and the Western Bulldogs respectively. But is this such a bad thing?

It will be for their club supporters, but overall, how many times have both home preliminary finalists lost to the away team in VFL-AFL history. Rarely, if not never.

This shows that the pre-finals bye round makes the finals more even and less predictable.

You had Sydney versus GWS, West Coast versus Western Bulldogs, Hawthorn versus Western Bulldogs, GWS versus Western Bulldogs, and Sydney versus Western Bulldogs – all of which had surprising outcomes.

That’s five out of nine finals that went against the odds, more than half. How often do you see more than half of the games in the finals series as an upset? Not often, in which it not only adds excitement not only into Round 23, but also into the whole entire finals series.

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Furthermore, the bye round creates a challenge for all members of a finals club, in preparation, management, training programs, and more throughout the conclusion of Round 23 and the opening of the finals.

It shows whether a great team is a great team, or whether a pretender is actually a great team underneath, or whether a great team is, in real fact, a pretender that can’t handle the pressure of finals.

Before the bye round was introduced, players, coaches, and doctors didn’t have to worry about management and preparation as much. However, with the bye round, teams, especially the winner of the qualifying finals, have to factor this into their training program to make sure they don’t lose momentum and have an 29-point win over a fellow finals team, and then go down by 47 in the first week of finals.

I strongly believe that Gillon McLachlan made a fantastic decision in placing a bye round between Round 23 and the first week of finals. It allows time for injured players to pull up for the finals, it makes the finals a more even contest, and it creates a challenge for everyone involved in a finals environment team.

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