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There’s nothing wrong with thinking of new formats for season scheduling. But not all changes are for the better. And the idea of a ’17-5′ model is certainly not for the better.
In its current form, the structure of an AFL season is fairly straightforward. Each team plays 22 games, 11 at home and 11 away. And then the top eight play in the finals.
An alternative model is being considered. It’s been put to the clubs before and rejected, but reports suggest AFL CEO Gillon McLachlan is keen.
The 17-5 model sees the home-and-away season split into two parts. Firstly, each team plays each other once; playing 17 games. Nine teams would play nine home games during those rounds, nine would play eight.
After this, the teams would be split into three groups. The top six in one group, the middle six in a second group and the bottom six in a third. Each team would then play a game against each other team in their group.
There are some who believe this model would reduce the number of “meaningless” games. The top six teams would play off against each other in the last five rounds, leading to many more “blockbuster” clashes between teams in strong form. The blockbuster status would however be eroded as there is no longer a guarantee that two
The middle group would see two teams making their way into the finals, while playing similarly-matched teams.
And the bottom group would have more winnable games, with one variation of the theme for this model seeing this group playing off for stronger draft positions with an incentive to win.
Whether this disadvantages genuinely uncompetitive teams further is a possible drawback of the variation.
But it’s a model that has significant weaknesses.
For the last five rounds, it removes the certainty of when games will be scheduled. At the moment, clubs are selling memberships and sponsorship packages. With the exception of the floating final round, when members and sponsors sign up, they know exactly when and where the home games will be.
Fans can, with confidence, sign up for memberships and book flights and accommodation for interstate trips. Knowing where and when the games are.
But in the 17-5 model, only the first 17 games can be known in advance. With no way of knowing which teams will fall into which groups, the last five games can’t be scheduled until the first 17 have been played.
This means members and sponsors are signing up while not knowing when and where the last five games will be played. This means two or three home games that are unknown at the time of signing up.
But the fatal flaw with the model is that it’s not possible to guarantee every club an equal number of home games, or even a number of home games that is known before the season starts.
The difference between a home game and an away game is significant. Teams may share grounds, but only one team can be the home team in any game.
The home team’s members have the best reserved seats. The home team’s sponsors sit in the prime corporate facilities and have their names and logos on the ground signage.
It’s the home team that has their colours prominently around the stadium and the home team whose sponsors are promoted around the ground, whose sponsors receive nationally televised exposure.
Some clubs play their home games at more than one ground. Hawthorn and GWS Giants are a couple of examples. At each of those grounds, they sell the prime seats to their members, and the same sponsors are shown on the ground signage and given exposure on national TV.
Melbourne’s games in the Northern Territory and Western Bulldogs’ game in Cairns also sees the clubs sell memberships for those seats and sees the clubs’ sponsors promoted.
It is not possible for a game to be concurrently a home game for both clubs. The reserved seats, the ground signage, the corporate facilities, are mutually exclusive.
Under the 17-5 model, nine teams will have had nine home games and nine will have had eight when the teams are divided into the three groups.
If each group of six teams were to consist of three teams that have had nine home games and three that have had eight it would be easy enough to give the teams that have had eight home games in the first phase of the season three home games during the group phase, while the teams that have had nine home games would get two.
Everyone would end up with 11 home games.
But if, for example, one of the groups was to see two teams that have played nine home games and four that have played eight.
The two teams that have played nine home games would get two home games in the group phase. But only three teams that have played eight home games could get a third home game during the group phase. One team would be left a home game short.
It’s also possible to go over. If there were four teams that had nine home games in a group, one of them would get three home games during the group phase and end up with 12.
Although on the balance of probabilities, teams should get 11 home games, this can not be guaranteed. This lack of guarantee creates issues.
Can a club, in good conscience, sell memberships, sponsorships and ground signage for 11 games?
If they did, they would run the risk of having to compensate disgruntled members and sponsors.
And if they didn’t, and were end up getting 11, or even 12 home games, they would then have to sell the memberships and sponsorships as casual one-off matches.
With only a few weeks to do it. If it’s a struggling team in the bottom group, that’s a hard sell.
And with games contracted to secondary markets, the proportional risk of a shortfall in the primary market becomes greater.
For a club like GWS Giants, with three home games already contracted to Canberra, it’s the Greater Western Sydney market that would cop the hit.
Canberra is important to the Giants. It’s worth a million dollars a season plus 3,500 members. Those three games are here to stay, and so they should.
But the 17-5 model sees the risk that the Giants could end up playing just seven games, less than a third of the season, in Greater Western Sydney. That’s an unacceptable risk.
Of course we want a fair draw, and one that enables the maximum number of people to attend games. And it’s hard to do that with 18 teams playing 22 games each.
But when it comes to maximising attendances, uncertainty for five rounds doesn’t achieve that. And when it comes to fairness, leaving clubs at risk of a shortfall in their home games doesn’t achieve that.
And so the 17-5 fixture model is flawed. And is an idea best left not implemented.
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