Collingwood's Dale Thomas marks over Sydney's Heath Grundy during the AFL Round 21 match between the Collingwood Magpies and the Sydney Swans at the MCG. Slattery Images
It was discretely put out there this week what the AFL plans to do with the fixturing once there are 18 teams, some sort of ad-hoc scheduling after Round 17 once everyone has played each other once. They do this sort of thing in the Scottish Premier League, but this system comes with problems.
First and foremost, it puts a stake through the heart of a true home and away season.
People have already been upset about the fact that teams don’t play each other twice during the course of the season. The perfect number for a 22 week season is 12 teams.
At least in Scotland the teams have all played each other three times during the season. Such being the case, the last five matches are viewed as a bonus round and whatever happens happens.
This won’t be the case here and the traditional AFL stakeholders are going to find this Brave New World a bit too brave.
Factors such as travel to Perth are likely to throw a spanner in the works. One possible solution would be to introduce some sort of conference system similar to what the NFL uses. But then again, this creates its own set of problems.
The other issue brought up was the finals, and Andrew Demetriou suggested that there would be as many as nine or ten teams in the finals. With a team making the finals this year with less than eleven teams, more teams in the finals isn’t a good idea.
Then there also is the question of what the format of this expanded finals system is going to be.
What kind of benefit is the top team going to be conferred with? Who is going to devise it given Kenneth McIntyre is no longer with us?
Hopefully it won’t have anything to do with the Final 6 system, which just was a mess and even more difficult to explain than the Final 8 system.
The AFL should be applauded for having the courage to expand and to take the game to new regions. Once they get up and running the Gold Coast and Western Sydney sides are going to contribute a lot to the competition.
There are going to be teething problems, but that is the case with anything.
When a family welcomes a new addition, the existing children can be jealous of the lack of attention. Is this what the sixteen existing members of the AFL family are going to be feeling?
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