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With the season already two rounds down, and already being April, it’s clear the AFL have ticked some boxes over the last couple of months.
The women’s league was a fantastic expanded footprint for the game, and timing also ensured a great transition into the men’s season.
Already we are seeing patterns of games with higher scoring and a renewed emphasis on attacking footy from many clubs.
The big worry for me is the Gold Coast who have me thinking about how the AFL could look in a few years.
The Suns are cause for an early write-off following a huge line of attempts to crack the golden egg that is the Gold Coast market across AFL, rugby league and football. If the ‘Son of God’, Gary Ablett Jnr, thinks it is no good, then I think we have a significant issue.
With that in mind, I took the liberty of devising a conference-based national competition, without hopefully upsetting too much of the apple cart.
To start off, we maintain 18 teams, making sure to have a presence in every state and territory.
As it would work, North Melbourne move to Tasmania and Gold Coast is abandoned. Tasmanian and Northern Territory sides are introduced into the competition as well to ensure expansion across the nation.
The pre-season competition is abandoned. The draw also becomes something fans can understand, being divided into a two-conference system: an AFL Conference and a VFL Conference.
AFL Conference
Greater Western Sydney Giants (3 games in the ACT)
Sydney Swans
West Coast Eagles
Fremantle Dockers
Brisbane Lions (3 games in Cairns)
Darwin Dingoes (2 games in Alice Springs)
Adelaide Crows
Port Adelaide Power
Tassie Kangaroos (split between Hobart and Launceston)
VFL Conference
Collingwood Magpies
Western Bulldogs
Essendon Bombers
Carlton Blues
Richmond Tigers
Geelong Cats
Hawthorn Hawks
St Kilda Saints
Melbourne Demons
Under this format, the AFL and VFL play each other twice within their own conference and then play games against the other conference once.
This is a total of 25 regular season games.
The Grand Final is played between the winner of each conference, squaring off following a top 4 intra-conference knock-out qualifying finals system.
The top four play each other in each conference (1 versus 4, 2 versus 3) in a knock out style match up, and then a Conference Final determines the right to advances to the Grand Final. Effectively, this will be three weeks of finals.
In this model, the total number of matches for the year is 28.
To compare against how it currently stands, sides that make the Grand Final can play up to 29 games in a year, with 3 pre-season matches in the JLT Community Series.
Critics will come in and say that the AFL would not cop losing a week of finals and that Darwin doesn’t have the population to sustain a team.
My counter to the latter point is that northern Australia is AFL heartland (and the Government is certainly looking at heavy investment with the Northern Australia strategy) – and investing millions in a place like the Gold Coast is money better spent in NT.
This model maintains a home and away structure for Victorian clubs to play each other twice, and also allows sides in the AFL conference to see half the Vic teams at home each year.
It could well be argued that the travel impost on the AFL conference is too significant, but I think most of these clubs are used to significant travelling as it is and have structures in place.
Other concepts for the new structure, where I don’t pretend to have any expertise, but would think to be an interesting exploration, are the following:
Drafting
This would be lottery based for teams who do not make the finals in the previous year.
Bring back zoning
Teams would get 16-17 Rookie selections. Each side must take three rookie picks according to their local zoning/academies.
If you option these rookies at 18, you lose your first, second and third round picks (depending on how many you pick up), without arbitration on value. Those rookies that are not optioned at 18 go into the lottery.
Full-time and Neutral umpires
To destroy any notion of the conspiracy theorists, games are played with state-neutral umpires. So a West Coast-Sydney game could have two Vic and one SA umpires for example. Promote opportunities for a broader umpiring base to get more in the game.
Be interested in your thoughts, Roarers.
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