Victoria has twice the number of AFL teams of any other state. How long can this imbalance continue?
If the AFL is serious about addressing the uneven draw, then the fairest solution is for all teams to host a match against each of the other teams. If the amount of teams was cut to 12, it would allow for a fairer draw.
By having 22 rounds, and playing each of the other 11 opposing teams twice, once away and once at home, it would make for a fairer draw.
Having four clubs in Victoria is still twice that of any other state; nevertheless, it is giant leap forward from where we are today. Something like this would need to be part on one grand plan that could be implemented with all the Victorian clubs merging together in the one year.
I wouldn’t recommend mergers happening incrementally over many years or decades into the future, this would result in a long drawn out process of unnecessary pain for all involved. The earlier the foundations are laid, the earlier history is made.
There are various possibilities for which clubs would get it together. One would be splitting Melbourne’s metropolitan area into four regions and extending down to Geelong. Then allocating best fit clubs to whichever region more appropriate and taking into consideration their clubs historical links to particular suburbs or towns.
Ideally, these four enlarged clubs would be evenly spread by each clubs’ membership numbers, so that any club is not disadvantaged by having significantly fewer members.
One of these Victorian clubs would continue to maintain the relationship with Tasmania where they would continue to play matches each year in that state, perhaps alternating between Launceston and Hobart. This is similar to the relationship that the GWS Giants have with Canberra, where they play three or four matches each year – although for Tasmania the economics may suggest just one or two matches each year for that state.
With regard to the Northern Territory, this state would unfortunately struggle to make an attractive proposition for one of the other three clubs because the lost gate takings might just be too great to compensate for. This is a negative, but there is the possibility of playing a pre-season competition match up there.
Possibly a non-Victorian club that finished in the bottom four of the ladder and with attendances at their home ground being fairly ordinary, might consider selling one of their home matches to Darwin.
The one match played in New Zealand each year would also struggle to be viable, similar to Darwin’s case of not being able to match the gate receipts you would achieve by keeping the match in Melbourne.
Another aspect is sponsorship. Having less clubs in Victoria would enable the sponsorship dollars to be concentrated among the four aggrandised clubs. They would each receive more sponsorship dollars than the present situation where the money is more thinly spread over the ten clubs.
Lastly and most importantly, the challenge is going to be getting the existing supporters of the ten Victorian teams to contemplate shifting their loyalty to these four new clubs.
The public relations experts would need to be highly skilled to take on something so emotional for the fans to come to terms with.
But nevertheless, situations like this have happened in the past. I recall when the supporters of clubs belonging to both the WAFL and the SANFL competitions switched over to their respective states’ AFL teams.
It would be painful, but would it be better for the AFL in the long term?
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