Wildcard Weekend

[The Octagon]

The AFL needs to adopt a Conference System for this to work, as it is the best way of 'perfecting' the draw and making the competition as even as possible. It would also provide an easier sell to scrap the NAB Cup and go to a 25 round competition, which is basically the same length as now.

Obviously the make-up of the conferences would cause some clubs/supporters anger etc, but it would also be a way to guarantee the big matches like Coll v Carl, Coll v Ess, Ess v Carl, Adel v Port, WCE v Freo etc all occur twice a season.

Conference 1:
Collingwood
Carlton
Essendon
Richmond
Adelaide
Port Adelaide
West Coast
Fremantle
North Melbourne

Conference 2: 9 teams
St.Kilda
Geelong
Hawthorn
Melbourne
Western Bulldogs
Brisbane
Sydney
Gold Coast
GWS

Obviously you could substitute the last remaining Vic side for another, but essentially you have 3-4 big drawing Melbourne based clubs and a weaker club in the conference, and you have the Central & Western Australian clubs together to reduce travel. Same applies for the Eastern State clubs (Bris, GC, GWS, Syd)

Play each club in your conference twice (home and away), and each club in the other conference once. (Alternate each season home and away, for example Collingwood play Sydney at home 1st year, and play @ Sydney the next season.)

16 games versus Inter Conference opponents, and 9 versus the other conference sides.

Top 4 clubs of each conference qualify for finals, with the conference leaders receiving a pennant/trophy and it gives the clubs something to play for. Also, home ground advantage is based on best record.

If they want to have Wildcards, then have the top 3 automatically qualify and have 4th v 5th from each conference play in the Wildcard Weekend.

Finals Structure:

Conference 1: (Alphabetical order for purpose of example)
Adelaide (Conference winner)
Carlton
Collingwood
---------------------------
Essendon
Fremantle
---------------------------
North Melbourne
Port Adelaide
Richmond
West Coast

Conference 2:
Brisbane
Geelong
Gold Coast
--------------------------
Hawthorn
GWS
--------------------------
Melbourne
St.Kilda
Western Bulldogs
Sydney

Finals would then be decided via knockout through the conferences and the Grand Final would be the 2 conference champions:

1 v 4
2 v 3
---------------
Winner game 1 v Winner game 2
---------------
GF: Conference Champions

 

[Keys]

About as good a proposal as I've seen

you could argue on the makeup of eac conference but the idea of having 5 Victorian and 4 interstate clubs in each conference is a good one

 

[Father Jack]

How about 1 - 16 playoff. (1 v 16, 2 v 15, etc). Winners through to the following week. Just like the NAB cup but with the bottom 2 teams from the H & A seasons eliminated and not taking part.

If we can get a few teams to merge and go back to 16 sides we could even get rid of that meaningless home and away season the takes up week after week of the winter. All games will be meaningful then and there is less chance of injury to the players.

No, I don't think that would be necessary. There is this thing called 'balance'.