Champ you have some great ideas and they are worth pursuing send them into the HFNL and see how you go.
What the article in The Subby failed to address is that the landscape has changed significantly since the glory days of interleague.
Obviously the AFL has changed and broadcasting has too. When I was a boy 3YB broadcast the HFL with score updates of the then VFL. There were no live matches except the Swans on Sundays and Friday nights started in about 1987. The HFL had a much bigger profile in the loca media and a bit of prestige about it.
AFL/VFL was only semi professional most blokes still had regular jobs, there was nowhere near the money involved. Lists were bigger and drafting did not exist, each club had a zone that it could recruit from.
Once finished in the AFL most players filtered back into Metro or Country Footy as playing coaches. Think Grant Thomas and many others in the HFL alone. There were also plenty of others who had had a taste of the city but didn't like it. At one stage I reckon every coach in the HFL was ex AFL, now ...... It's not having a go at the current coaches just a statement of fact.
There was no TAC cup and as a rule guys were recruited a little bit older.
Thus Interleague became the place to see the best of your league that included;
*recent AFL players straight out of the game
*young guns who might make it
*solid players who were happy where they were but could have made it
Every league had heaps of ex AFL players running around and dependent upon who the HFL were playing you would get to see some great players and generally a great game. Importantly their were always recruiters watching these games.
Unfortunately it's just not the same anymore.
