Cunnington Cartel
All Australian
- Nov 18, 2022
- 735
- 1,169
- AFL Club
- North Melbourne
Conference championships would be one logical way to recognise team success (other than a premiership). It’s also good to structure the conferences like you have to tap into some of the intra and interstate rivalries. Your model is similar to models shared by myself and others on here previously - your proposal might have inadvertently killed off a Victorian club though, because you only have nine listed.Made me wonder about if there should be conferences involved with all this talk of ACT, NT and WA3 again lately given the clubs preferences for more “winners” and trophies, providing one Victorian team leave or merge interstate (which is very unlikely mind you but we can dream).
With 20 teams soon, you could have four divisions of 5 clubs that can consist of:
Victoria 1: 4x Melbourne + 1x Geelong
Victoria 2: 4x Melbourne + 1x Tasmania
North-Eastern: Brisbane + Canberra or Darwin + Gold Coast + Sydney + Western Sydney
South-Western: Adelaide + Darwin or Perth (WA3) + Fremantle + Port Adelaide + West Coast
No pre-season matches would be played and each team would face everyone once (19 rounds) before playing each team again in their conference (4 rounds) and then playing against one team in each of the different conferences (3 rounds*) resulting in a 26 round season (13x home / 13x away).
After the regular season finishes, the Top 2 from each conference would advance to the finals (via knockout or current finals style with overall ladder) and this can then be updated to the 2 best 3rd place teams out of the 4 conferences to make it a 10 team series, if current final series was in place still.
Obviously this proposal is very americanised and doesn’t 100% help the equalisation of travel load of all clubs, as the non-Victorian teams would have to travel more than the Melbourne centric clubs, but it would help ease the load a little while also help clubs celebrate some sort of success more often when they win their conference (trophy involved) or qualify for overall finals.
With 20 clubs, they might be able to get away continuing without conferences and having an expanded finals series with a wildcard round. However, if the league continues pushing towards 21+ clubs then, without conferences, it’s just going to get ridiculous for more and more clubs in terms of premiership droughts, lack of success, and dead rubber games towards the end of the season where a greater number of clubs have little to play for.
Look at the excitement at the end of the English Premier League season where there are battles for the league title, relegation, champions league, Europa league spots. We only have making the finals (which is relatively meaningless), and then winning the flag for a league with (soon to be) the same number of teams as the EPL.
There are great teams of yesteryear like St Kilda of 15 years ago, Geelong in the early 90’s that never saluted on the last day of September, but are still considered iconic teams of those eras and for their fanbases. They should never be held in the same regard as premiership sides, although there should be something else for teams of this ilk to achieve during their eras of success.
The national comp has evolved from a 12 team state league with 22 H&A games. Therefore, it’s about time the structure of the league better reflects the number and location of teams across the entire country. If the best way to do this involves having more rounds, holding the GF later in October, having conferences, expanding the number of finals qualifiers etc, then so be it. In this regard, Gather Round is a massive step in the right direction of the AFL developing a new initiative that stimulates interest in the sport, without detracting from some of the great traditions that originated in Victoria and still benefit Victorians and their clubs more so than anyone else.