A 17-round AFL season may work

But 17 games still isnt fair, as you'd always have an uneven amount of games played home and away. Who gets more home games? Surely they have an unfair advantage. Morale is, lets just accept the system for what it s. Its not that bad.

The AFL need to increase their footprint not shrink; 17 rounds is suicidal from a business point of view. All it would do is give Rugby League, A-League, Super Rugby/Wallabies ample clear air space to take attention, sponsors and steal market share. Gillon should be looking at dominating the sporting landscape for 9 months of the year not 5.

Like the thinking. But the biggest challenge from a league perspective you'd have to answer is the loss of revenue/ratings of the blockbusters where eg a Carl & Coll who play twice today, are in separate divisions (very possible given todays positions) in this scenario. From an individual club scenario if say a Coll finish in Div 2, but most of Carl, Rich, Ess, Haw, Geel all Div 1, would they be likely to support? I like the conference scenario which changes every year. 2 x 9 teams based on last years finishing positions. 1st goes to eg AFC (call em whatever you like) 2nd to NFC, 3rd to AFC and so on. Each team plays each other twice in the conference and once cross conferences. Yes its a US concept but think it retains a much bigger revenue share than a divisional approach. There are therefore 26 (one bye) or 27 (two byes) rounds rather than 23 today so scrap the pre-season and get the MCC deal done asap. Season starts early/mid March latest and GF moves to 1st or 2nd week of Oct latest. Oops may upset rugby league and possibly the Caulfied Cup not to mention sheffield shield/district cricket. But Im sure we could negotiate a solution for the cricket & horse racing.

Simple solution. Either expand the competition to 20 teams with a Tasmanian team plus one other or reduce the number of Victorian clubs to bring the number of teams in the competition to 16. From there you have two divisions with promotion and relegation. So a 20 team competition provides for 10 clubs in each division with each club playing every other club in their division twice (18 rounds) or 16 teams has 8 clubs in each division playing everyone else 3 times (21 rounds). This way you have clubs of similar abilities playing each other. You have all teams in division one either playing for a finals berth or trying to avoid the relegation zone. This leaves, at worst, three clubs in division two who, late in the season, having nothing to play for (as opposed to now up to 6 or 7 clubs who start planning for next season with quite a few rounds left to play). Also allows for more clubs to achieve finals and premiership success (albeit a division two flag while division one success still remains the ultimate success). Some may argue that clubs in division two are going into a season with no chance of ultimate success (division one) but realistically how many clubs currently win a premiership without having played finals in the previous season or two. You never have a club appear from nowhere to win the flag. Even if Port Adelaide win the flag this year, they took the step of playing finals last year. Coming from near last in 2012, they were never any chance of winning the flag in 2013 but improved to make finals. So, under a divisional system, from near last they improve to win promotion to division one, priming them for a realistic tilt at ultimate success the next year. Others might argue that support will drop off for those in division two but that happens anyway when clubs slide down the ladder and they have no hope of finals. But if they are a club that are realistically no chance of premiership glory under the current system, the chance of a division two premiership provides hope of success for supporters of those clubs. Take Melbourne for example, realistically, coming into the season, no chance for finals and even less for the premiership. Supporters go along to the game just hoping to see tangible improvement. This season, even though we've seen that improvement, who seriously thinks they can make finals? In division two, their supporters could realistically start dreaming of a finals appearance. And GWS, St Kilda and Brisbane, not having to play any of the top sides (who would be in division one) would potentially lose less games by big margins making more games more watchable.

To an extent we do sort of have State of Origin games because: NSW has the Swans, SA has the Power, WA has Fremantle, and Queensland have the Suns. The other team in each of the states is just their B side. So we really don't need the same formula that the NRL have and would in any case just take away from our existing competition.

The fairest system presently would be two divisions of 9 (or 4 divisions - 2 of 5 teams and 2 of 4 teams) with 25 matches per club.... Personally I think the AFL would be much more likely to go down this route than a 17 game season.

Exactly. What can't people who advocate less games understand about that? Less games = less revenue. Good luck convincing the players to take a pay cut so they can have a longer holiday! Hahahaha

We need to keep it at a minimum of 22 games, so that the contracts for the TV rights are maintained. I think the solution is to have all games between teams who play each other twice are worth only 2 points, therefore each team can only get a maximum of 4 points from each team during the year. If these games were all played at the same time I think it would be interesting.

This will never happen, even though it should. No company would ever take measures that would see its revenue drop by millions of dollars. But something needs to be done with the bye rounds, splitting up Round One and then having three weeks of byes just diminishes interest and momentum. And State of Origin is gone, though I believe it would be a success especially if played on a Thursday night before a bye weekend as proposed above.

Those contractual agreements for "sold" home games would be a problem area. For example, Hawthorn currently have four games contracted in Tasmania. Cutting the season would leave them with only four home games in Melbourne, clearly not enough. Similarly, GWS would only have five home games in Sydney. The result would be that those contracts would have to be torn up; leaving places like Tasmania, Canberra, FNQ, NT, NZ etc with no live AFL. Either that or those clubs would have so few home games in their home city as to make memberships and corporate packages near worthless.

As things currently stand closest thing to a fair draw possible is to play the sides in the same third of the ladder from the previous season twice and accept that a few blockbuster games and derbies/showdowns will only occur once in a given season. Some time down the track (probably no sooner than 2025) the AFL may look to expand to 20 teams - which will reconcile the desire for a fair draw with the AFL's desire to get a good deal on TV rights by simply having a 19 round season. We can only hope. If the AFL wanted to do proof of concept on rep footy, I'd think the best way to go would be to have Victoria playing South Australia at Adelaide Oval on Thursday night before a full bye week. That gets the best mix of crowd attendance, television interest and maximum recovery time for players involved.

Not a bad idea Noel. I am in favour of unconditional equality.

The simple fix to the draw (seeming how with the cricket season + the AFL’s reluctance to schedule mid week fixtures makes playing each club/franchise twice a season near impossible) and that is every club/franchise plays each other only once a season for a 17 round season. To try and make it fair each Victorian Club would have to play in each outer-state once a season(this does not take into account certain clubs with contractual agreements to play their home games in regional areas/interstate example Tasmania for the HFC & NMFC and Canberra for Greater Western Sydney). So in the first season of this revised fixture EFC’s games against the interstate Clubs/Franchises would be Gold Coast, PAFC, Greater Western Sydney & West Coast Away & Fremantle, Adelaide Crows, Sydney Swans & Brisbane Lions at home. Their matches against Victorian based clubs would be split to St.KFC, CFC, NMFC, HFC, GFC away & CFC, WBFC, RFC, MFC at home. In the second season of the revised 17 round season the fixture flips so all of EFC’s away fixtures become home games and Vice versa. It is a shame the AFL is now mostly a business venture and not a sporting competition. It seems the AFL only cares about TV broadcast deal revenue not the fairness of the competition. Until they prioritise the fairness of the competition above the money of TV broadcast deals (amongst other money spinning operations) the AFL as a competition will always be a tainted and bias one.

So, with the extra two months with no football(AFL) what do we all do? I suppose there is soccer and rugby to go and watch. Ohh, with a third less matches I suppose the tv networks will be paying a third less, and the members a third less for their tickets. So, the players can enjoy that extra two months break, with a third pay cut. You would think they would want to extend the season, not just give a massive leg up to other sports and slash income to the whole footy industry. The money has to come out of someone's pocket at the end of the day.

Not another article about the unfairness of the draw! As a paid-up member of my club, I am happy with the way things are. I certainly don't want to be deprived of 5 games to watch. And I certainly don't want some quaint interstate clashes to interrupt the season either.

An aesy sulution would be to start season 2015 with thefirst 17 rounds all teams play each other. Then you go back to the start again. The next year you simply pick up where you left off. The following year starys where the previous season ended. No more guaranreed blockbustets i.e. collingwood v carlton but fair to all teams over time.

What's important isn't other sports, it's our sport. In a competitive sporting market, exposure is everything. To suggest the AFL will reduce their exposure in order to give more oxygen to other sports is fantasy land thinking.

The season is too short already and some people want it to be made shorter! I don't include 'shouts chen' as he is a merely a troll who supports rugby league. The current fixture is not perfect but it is the best we can get.

Wont work in Australia until we can show every game of those 17 rounds will be a sell out. Just like the NFL. And that aint gonna happen anytime soon. So untl then it would be less money and less exposure and therefore no chance in the short to medium term. And frankly who cares about interstate clashes. Unlike NRL you cant just have two teams, given that footy is the dominant code in four states & one territory. Not to mention the age old problem of coaches not wanting to risk players etc etc. Forget it. And btw who gives a proverbial about the NRL or ARU (and ALeague for that matter) ? They are direct competitors to AFL and AFL needs to be taking supporters from other codes not politely sharing exposure..

It wont work because the AFL will loose money. Less games less money, and the AFL aint going to do that.