Adelaide’s Rory Sloane and Taylor Walker after the higher-qualified Crows lost the 2017 grand final on Richmond’s MCG home ground. Photo: GETTY IMAGES
The 2024 AFL season is underway, though 10 of 18 teams are yet to play and round one is yet to begin, last week’s “Opening Round” of four games the entrée before the main course.
Was the promotion catering to the northern AFL markets in Queensland and New South Wales a success? Depends who you ask.
The commercials certainly looked good, decent TV ratings and near sell-outs the order of the day and the likes of Gold Coast and Greater Western Sydney sufficiently emboldened to start becoming a little more outspoken about the future of the concept.
In the so-called “heartland” of Victoria, meanwhile, there were rumblings from the traditionalists about a flatness to the start of the new season, though given the heatwave which gripped Melbourne for several days it might have been just as well there were no games on there.
One issue left relatively untouched in the debate about how the football year should start, however, is the ramifications for the integrity of the season.
The four games plucked from subsequent rounds and played before the rest means that it will be only come the completion of round six that each of the 18 teams will have played the same amount of games. In other words, the first time the AFL ladder will actually provide a truly accurate portrayal of the state of play won’t be until nearly the end of April.
More importantly, though, the byes for the teams which played last weekend over the course of rounds two, three, five and six (round four is “Gather Round”) mean an extra break during the season for those involved besides the mid-season spell everyone shares.
Does that mean an added advantage, given the toll taken subsequently by the slog of a long home and away season? Geelong coach Chris Scott clearly thinks so.
“Those teams get two byes compared to every other team,” he said on Fox Footy on Monday night. “The AFL Player’s Association pushed the AFL to bring back the two byes, and the answer was always there was no time. But now they’ve found the time. That’s the frustrating part. Sometimes you need to compromise for the greater good and that could be the case in this situation. My point is just don’t pretend it’s not a compromise, of course it is.”
And the trade-off between commercial imperatives and competition integrity is certainly a recurring theme in modern-day AFL football, most obviously when it comes to the AFL fixture.
The lust for “blockbuster” games between bigger-drawing clubs at the biggest venues always discriminates against the less “sexy” AFL teams, both financially and if their “guaranteed twice” opponents are struggling, in a competitive sense. And so now will “Opening Round”, should it continue, work against particular clubs in a geographic sense.
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This, remember, against the backdrop of an already heavily-compromised fixture in which each club plays only six clubs twice and the other 11 just once. Indeed, the last time the draw was truly even was back in the VFL days of 1986.
Perhaps ironically, too, it’s some of the clubs from beyond Victoria who benefitted from the new inequity who are beginning to also bang the drum more loudly about finals equity, specifically the concept of a “best-of-three” grand final series, which according to Gold Coast chief executive Mark Evans, is seriously on the agenda.
“I do think it’s an enormous advantage,” Evans said on 3AW last weekend of the MCG venue for Victorian teams.
“I thought it last year, and Collingwood deserved everything last year because they were the top placed team, but if Brisbane had finished top, they would have walked into an MCG that was heaving with Collingwood supporters more of a Collingwood home game than a Brisbane home game, certainly not neutral.
“In three finals, Collingwood talked about their fans and how they got them up in those close games. So I think we have to have the discussion.”
Previous suggestions to the same effect have been all but laughed out of the room, particularly with the AFL and Victorian Government having signed a deal to keep the grand final at the MCG until 2059.
But the two “Covid grand finals” of 2020 and 2021 staged successfully in Brisbane and Perth have at least offered more food for thought, as has the fact that of the last nine grand finals played at the MCG between a Victorian and non-Victorian team, only once has the side from interstate emerged victorious.
I’ve come around on the idea of the higher-ranked team having the right to host the grand final each year, having seen the likes of West Coast and Adelaide suffer. Best-of-three, however, I’m not so sure about given the obvious logistical difficulties.
Then again, an expanded finals series would perhaps enable the AFL to reduce the home and away rounds to 17 with every team playing each other once only, clearly a fairer scenario than we have now, and without as big a shortfall of matches and thus broadcast revenue.
That, however, presumes that competition integrity is the AFL’s primary concern. And the mere concept of Opening Round suggests that presumption isn’t correct. As for the clubs benefiting from it? Well, fair play to those who need the boost commercially. But I’m not sure they can then also have their cake and eat it too when it comes to fairness.
This article first appeared in Australian Community Media publications.
