To even up the Gather round fesitval , jsut give Perth its own gather round... all vic teams travel to perth for weekend of football,I mentioned an idea very early in the season but, apart from all of the above, we could even things up a little more for WA teams by keeping round zero but open it up to all teams (obviously change the name !) and both WA teams get an extra home game every year.
The big 4 Vic clubs can all go north and play the 4 northern teams as stand alone games on Thursday Friday Saturday nights and Saturday arvo. Job done for northern exposure.
Round zero was on a long weekend so plenty of time for the rest of the games.
Both WA teams then play both SA teams in WA on the Sunday and Monday (switching each year). Will even out the SA advantage from gather round and maybe start building up a bit of WA/SA rivalry.
This will give WA teams one extra home game each year.
The smaller Vic clubs will then be playing in the only Vic based fixtures which will get plenty of crowds from footy starved punters from considering the big teams are all away, bit of a win for them.
Given there would be an uneven number of rounds they may have to switch alternate years in which Vic teams get the extra home or away round.
One extra round so tv rights will go up, obviously player payments would have to go up accordingly and because there is an extra round that increases the double up fixtures which again makes it more even (unless you go to 17 games where there are no double ups).
Plus we all get an extra game at Optus !
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