Prediction Do you believe the AFL will ever be the same again?

[Lsta062]

Richmond will still be around. It would be super disheartening though for most fans I think if in 2021 the lists looked vastly different though because if the AFL goes under all players become essentially unrestricted free agents. All teams will look very very different in 2021 if that was the case.

Your club would be one of the lucky ones to continue in to the future.

But the 2017 and 2019 Premierships

 

[Taylor]

If the AFL goes under and a new league is formed starting from scratch, then I may not follow Australian Football anymore. That would render our Premierships that we finally won after years of being crap void and I don’t want us to start again.

The AFL would just say that Richmond/Hawk/Melbourne etc all rolled into the new Melbourne MegaBallers and the fans of the new club will claim the flags all the way back to the dawn pf the VFL

 

[greatwhiteshark]

But the 2017 and 2019 Premierships

They will forever be on your letterhead

 

[RUNVS]

They will forever be on your letterhead

But technically part of another competition.

 

[shintemaster]

But less viewers, as an example if Freo fold i'm not going to watch west coast.
Same in Adelaide, the clubs with debt are in the most perilous possie, St Kilda, North, GC, GWS etc
The longer this goes, the worse it will become

North essentially don't have any debt. Like all clubs though we'll bleed money pretty quickly without income coming in the door. Only the biggest few have enough to ride this out for a couple of years without head office support IMO.

 

[WestCoast05]

So Gina Rinehart? Is the AFL about to become very pro-coal and extremely right wing?

I think your mixing up QLD and WA.
We export Iron Ore, Lithium, Gold etc

EDIT: if we did go that way I would rather Twiggy Forrest start the new league - but he's a rugby guys and has/is actually trying to start a rugby league that covers WA and SE Asia.

 

[greatwhiteshark]

But technically part of another competition.

And who cares? Port Adelaide have 35 first tier premierships and only one in the current AFL. They are all top level flags

 

[Cotchins Hair Piece]

The AFL won’t go under, calm down people.

 

[estibador]

If there's any sport/sporting body in Australia that's in a position to pull through this, it's the AFL.

Yeah people are being a bit alarmist imo.

I'm expecting the AFL to bounce back with minimal long term damage.

 

[HarryZLA]

If stkilda folds id probably just watch 2009 and 2010 for the rest of my life and pretend the season was cancelled due to another virus every year, after each prelim.

 

[serial_thrilla]

The AFL won’t go under, calm down people.

 

[Roddy]

If stkilda folds id probably just watch 2009 and 2010 for the rest of my life and pretend the season was cancelled due to another virus every year, after each prelim.

Calm TF down, StKilda ain't folding.

 

[kreglze]

If stkilda folds id probably just watch 2009 and 2010 for the rest of my life and pretend the season was cancelled due to another virus every year, after each prelim.

Least you have some successful years to reflect on haha.

 

[Stabby McGee]

I don’t think anything will be the same. Upheavals like this always change society- sometimes good, sometimes bad, but always different. I don’t see why the AFL should be different

 

[RUNVS]

Swans will be okay. We have Geoffrey Edelsten (Edelsten, not Epstein) in our corner

 

[threenewpadlocks]

All you need to do is look at the size of the growth of AFL House and Club employees and the expenditure spend of clubs, because of the exponential growth of the television rights, to see that clubs aren't going to go under or anything.

If the AFL can go from a few dozen employees to several hundred in 10-15 years, they can go back to several dozen. Same things for clubs. etc.

The reason for this is it's the fundamentals of being a non-profit, yeah? The reason the AFL and its clubs have so many employees is because of the end of the day they need to spend the ever increasing money they get over the last 20 years or so to balance the books. The AFL doesn't aim to make a profit, it aims to redistribute its revenue to enhance the competition and manage/be the custodian of the game and that's a fluid concept.

Going to be ugly with individuals losing their jobs, but the structural foundation of the league and its clubs should be intact: they can borrow money against Docklands as an asset, and cut spending for next year because they don't need to have 30 participation development officers in every state, still have a big TV revenue for 2021 that is still a large size that will have a large surplus against the expenditures, and then they can pay back the money. They can cut costs in "nonessential" ways etc. I'm sure you can save money by not having a Hall of Fame induction night for a year or two, among the many things they can do.

 

[Trucker Tiger]

There'll no longer be 15 assistant coaches in the coaches box, which is a good thing.

There'll no longer be five people in the Fox Footy/Ch 7 commentary boxes, which is an even better thing.

 

[RUNVS]

There'll no longer be 15 assistant coaches in the coaches box, which is a good thing.

There'll no longer be five people in the Fox Footy/Ch 7 commentary boxes, which is an even better thing.

I have genuinely wondered what all these assistant coaches do.

I mean just at the Swans we have 9 coaches, which is a coach for every 5 players. It seems rather excessive.

 

[Spacedog]

I can see a few clubs being cut or merged, and as a result the fixture becomes 30 rounds with shortened games and every team playing each other twice to make up for lost revenue

 

[gingernuts]

back to basics for our CEO

 

[mouncey2franklin]

For fans of the clubs who are usually in the firing line for these sort of things how are you feeling right now? Is it more palatable for your club to disappear because of this virus than it was when the AFL were trying to relocate, merge or otherwise end your club since this is in no way the AFL's idea?

Excellent question. I don't think my fellow NMFC fans have worked out what this means for us yet. The coronavirus thread on our board is still full of people who will attack anybody who dares to suggest 'the cure is worse than the disease' when it comes to coronavirus. Maybe when they realise that one of the consequences of the 'cure' (our club is no longer involved in top-rung football) some of them might begin to reconsider, especially if it turns out that the 'disease' is not as deadly as we have been led to believe by government and media.

 

[mouncey2franklin]

If the AFL goes under and a new league is formed starting from scratch, then I may not follow Australian Football anymore. That would render our Premierships that we finally won after years of being crap void and I don’t want us to start again.

How so?

Seems to me you get to celebrate being the last powerhouse team of the AFL.

Two flags and prelim in the final three years of the comp as we knew it. Excellent way to end things.

And whatever new league comes about, your club is among the safest in terms of being party to it.

Richmond fans are in a good spot right now, especially compared to fans of most other Victorians clubs.

I'd say Collingwood and Geelong are the only two other 'safe' clubs (insofar as being welcomed back to a new league).

 

[Hawkie_McHawkHawk]

You’d think the AFLW would be first to disappear no? Unfortunate timing in its infancy but making no $ at all and costing quite a bit to run, it may have to be built up in a Amateur league whilst the AFL recovers before it can be pushed back into the bigtime.

 

[spudmaster]

Had to vote for that final option - was too funny to pass up!

 

[mouncey2franklin]

For the record, after almost 24 hours of this thread being opened, here is how the poll was looking:



By the way, the reason the option 'No, several clubs are effectively finished...' is emboldened is because that was my selection.

The reason I waited until now to explain my own prediction is because I did not want to slant the discussion (which OP's can sometimes do).

Thanks to everybody for the comments in this thread so far, it has been fascinating and eye-opening.

I think we will be looking back on this thread in years to come and wondering how some people could have been so blinded to what was really taking place at the time.

Hopefully I am one of the wrong ones, and the 13% of people who think it will be 'business as usual later this year' are correct.

In fact almost half of poll respondents so far believe the AFL will return as is, either later this year or beyond.

I hope they are right. I seriously, seriously doubt it, but I have been wrong plenty of times before