AFL Looking At 3 Gather Rounds

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Test the concept in SA then bring it home to the Vics when it is proven to work. More home games for Collingwood, oversaturated idea. This screams ‘win for footy’
 
Here’s what I don’t get about three gather rounds.

If 24 games, that’s 21 that’s not gather round… so, teams are gonna have an uneven amount of home and away games?

Surely just have 2 gather rounds a year, not three.

Unless they go to 25 games per year.

I told the “if we get to 20 teams have a 19-20 game round season” crowd that was never happening.
 

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I do find it interesting they are think of the Sydney one being held at Easter.

When the only other major ground beside the SCG will be, ummm, unavailable.
Put some goal posts up at North Sydney Oval and away we go.

Would be good atmosphere for a Friday twilight and Sunday arvo.

Get all the workers from North Sydney come down.

If it's good for AFLW it's good enough for the AFL.
 
If round 1 is Labour Day, then the GF goes back a week into October, unless they drop the pre finals bye.
Hard to see the pre-finals bye staying in a 19-team comp. Probably not worth the risk of a club copping two weeks off heading into finals.
 
Hey look at this great initiative that breathing life into football for neutrals and being handled incredibly well in Adelaide.

What we really need to do is take it away from the space in which it works and astroturf it somewhere else.

What an absolute horses*** idea
 
Hey look at this great initiative that breathing life into football for neutrals and being handled incredibly well in Adelaide.

What we really need to do is take it away from the space in which it works and astroturf it somewhere else.

What an absolute horses*** idea
disagree.
 


Trust the AFL to turn a good idea into an oversaturated commercialised thing.

WTF are they doing?

Maybe we should turn each round into a travelling circus.


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Nothing like trying to bastardise a concept that the NRL flawlessly does - but the AFL does it so much worse!
 

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rubbish, funnily enough that's obviously the thought of someone in a fishbowl.
done right and promoted it would be huge.
Gather round works because it's in a footy state. Sydney would be like the state of origin match played in Adelaide recently. No one there knew the rules or gave a crap and I'd be surprised if any locals watched a second game that year.

Take it out of a footy state and it's not an organic celebration of footy, it's a hollow marketing exercise chasing money. You can't replicate gather round in a state that doesn't really watch footy.
 
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How can they justify putting a gather round in vic? Whats the logic there? Theres almost a gather round in Vic most weeks anyway, so theyll do 3-4 games in vic and 3-4 in tas?
Why bother making it a gather round? just schedule a few games in Tassy and carry on as usual.
Surely the logical idea if 3 gather rounds was locked in would be WA, SA and NSW. WA and SA need more attention than bloody Vic
What about QLD?
2020 showed the gather round concept could work and imagine it without the borders being shut.
 
The best way to ensure gather round stays in Adelaide long term would be to let other states have a turn and see how miserably it fails, nothing personal against any of the other states but they all have their obvious draw backs that just won’t make it the same.

Perth - distance
TAS - difficulty of access
Syd - lack of interest
Bris - lack of interest and distance (bit far to drive for some from SA and VIC)
Melb - every round is gather round
Country vic - could maybe work but I doubt the AFL would be happy for all 9 games to be at country grounds for all the money they would lose on ticket sales and unless they have some of the bigger matches in Geelong. Probably the 2nd best option logisticallly and all other factors considered.
 
The best way to ensure gather round stays in Adelaide long term would be to let other states have a turn and see how miserably it fails, nothing personal against any of the other states but they all have their obvious draw backs that just won’t make it the same.

Perth - distance
TAS - difficulty of access
Syd - lack of interest
Bris - lack of interest and distance (bit far to drive for some from SA and VIC)
Melb - every round is gather round
Country vic - could maybe work but I doubt the AFL would be happy for all 9 games to be at country grounds for all the money they would lose on ticket sales and unless they have some of the bigger matches in Geelong. Probably the 2nd best option logisticallly and all other factors considered.

I think you get a great vibe doing it in tassie but they don't have the infrastructure for it yet. I would look at it if they get the stadium off the ground.

Perth could make it work but if you have another gather round to go to then interstaters won't go and instead will go to the eastern seaboard one.

Vic doesn't make any sense in the slightest.

Sydney is a hollow marketing exercise that will just get drowned out within the city it's in.

QLD isn't completely out of the question but I would have to be convinced of the degree of support and I'm against it on balance at this point.

Adelaide is the only place where the Venn diagram lines up to make it huge. A small city of 1.4m so it gets taken over, that has ready made grounds, more AFL myopic than even Melbourne, ready made festival infrastructure that is already set up for all the back to back festivals from Jan to March, tons of rusted on fans of non-local teams that stuck with them even after the local teams got added, and a government desperate to showcase the state and shake off preconceptions about the state. You can't replicate that
 
If they do this, it will instantly kill the Gather Round concept dead. Footy fans are paying their dollars and getting around Gather Round once a year, they're not going to do it three times. Particularly if you put one in Victoria. If you do put one in Victoria, the Victorian fans (who are the main tourism drivers) definitely aren't going to bother flying to SA or NSW for their version.
 
The other thing is the timing. Someone said something about moving the Adelaide one to winter.

That would be a shocking decision. Half the reason it's such a massive success in Adelaide is because it's catching the fumes of festival season. It's jumping on a point where the city has a lot of momentum behind it.

Adelaide is in hibernation from June. Send it in winter and it'll be a struggle.
 
Clickbait Tommy.

  • Round 0 worked - 3 out of 4 big vic clubs lost - tick
  • Gather round worked
  • ANZAC day
  • Queens Birthday
  • Indigenous round
  • Perth needs something but they need to come up with something original
  • Tassie just needs to put its feet on the ground first
  • Vic has its gather round already - the grand final.

If it aint broke, leave it the fk alone.
 

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AFL Looking At 3 Gather Rounds

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