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Finally some fixture sense from the AFL

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Or just set the draft order at the end of round 17 when everyone played twice.

Yeah this is much better than locking 7th out of rising up the ladder.

What if there is a clear top 2, but a blanket could be thrown over 3rd-8th? It's bullshit to lock teams that are within striking distance out of top 4 calculations (and therefore, premiership calculations).

If you want to stop teams from tanking, do what Crankyhawk suggested and do it after 17 rounds, or maybe set the draft order based on the order that sides mathematically could no longer make finals, giving clubs insentive to try hard until they can't make it and then their draft order is set anyway so they may as well continue to have a crack.
 
Agreed that the 22/23 game season is flawed becuse of the number of teams, but given a 34 week season will never, ever eventuate it gets removed from the equation and we have to work with 18 teams and somewhere between 17 and 25 game seasons. That's the reality.

I'm against the draw being based on team performance, either the current or past years. The moment you start considering that, the draw gets compromised. Under my scheme over a set period all teams play all other teams an equal number of times both home and away. That's as close to a fair draw as we'll ever get under the current structure.
But that in itself is not fair. Imagine if just by any year you end up playing the 6 bottom teams twice and it gifts you a top 4 draw and you can rest players all through the season. The end result is you get a major leg up to win the premiership that year.

Making it seeded each year makes it fairer because then each team is on some sort of level playing ground than making a rolling fixture.

Divisions are the other way to make it fair but you have to be confident that there isn't ingrained inequity in the divisions. With 18 teams and 10 based in Melbourne that's pretty hard to do.
 
This is a good way perhaps of having a bit each way in keeping it interesting as well as avoiding propping up better team.

Say award larger number of balls at end of 17 rounds from bottom side up. Then the rest of the balls are awarded after round 22 from 13th down to 18th.
And then amend priority pick to be "you are so bad you get pick 1 without lottery" pick
 
Playing for draft picks is a strange idea. The top teams in that pool are likely to get the best players, that might or might not be fair, but what will the struggling/depth players be thinking? They will be playing so that good players can come into the team and replace them?
By 'playing for draft picks' I thought they meant playing, and the loser gets the draft picks. I didn't think they meant drastically altering the draft order. Seems to be a technique to get the bottom 6 teams some more wins towards the end of the year so even the worst team finishes with 5 or 6 or so wins. It ignores the fact that some teams might be so bad to not cash in on those wins and then will have super bad late season losses that seem to undermine a season of decent improvement - see Melb v GWS.
 

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Yep Horrible, horrible solution. If this is the best they can come up with, there's something seriously wrong in AFL HQ. No doubt there will be some nuffies in the media like KB or 'Darce' who get right behind the idea, and the AFL will once again mistake the medias' opinion on something, as that of the fans.
 
In recent years has there been much real difference between picks 1 to 6? Or maybe use the draft order from the bottom 6 echelon for the 2nd and subsequent draft rounds.
I agree with you to a certain extent - the fact that a single player can't transform a team means that the difference between 1-6 isn't that big.

But that's the other side of the coin right? We've got teams playing off for five weeks for something that doesn't matter *that* much. Seems incredibly pointless.
 
I believe the 5 games extra on top of the 17, should come at the start of the season, not the end. Reason being, 1: Teams playing in the top 6 will be stuffed by playing 5 blockbuster games in a row before finals. 2: If they are interstate sides and one Melbourne side in the top 6, the Melbourne side would be stuffed by finals, having to fly everywhere to play. As would any of the interstate sides.

If you go off the previous seasons ladder, and play five sides in your section to start with, you will have a heap of close games to start the year. When those five are played, you just go into playing the remaining 17. I don't think there should be sections, where one team on the top of one section can't rise into the other section no matter how many wins you get. That would be unfair.
 
If thers a cut, it may not be on percentage, or 6th could ply 7th in a wildcard

But whos home game would it be ?


Also remember the finals is based on a round robin, but with seeding removing all the dead rubbers.

Look at the top four, under normal circumstances the premier has to beat each of the other top four teams

If there was a top six round robin, the finals should be reduced to top four playing prelims and a grand final
 
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So the top 6 will play each other after 17 rounds, then play each other again in the finals? Seems a bit silly.

I'd just prefer they either did a rolling draw over 4 years so everyone plays everyone else 5 times (with one 'rival' they play twice a year), or simply pick the double up matches at random.

This - just roll over the extra games from year to year.
 
I believe the 5 games extra on top of the 17, should come at the start of the season, not the end. Reason being, 1: Teams playing in the top 6 will be stuffed by playing 5 blockbuster games in a row before finals. 2: If they are interstate sides and one Melbourne side in the top 6, the Melbourne side would be stuffed by finals, having to fly everywhere to play. As would any of the interstate sides.

If you go off the previous seasons ladder, and play five sides in your section to start with, you will have a heap of close games to start the year. When those five are played, you just go into playing the remaining 17. I don't think there should be sections, where one team on the top of one section can't rise into the other section no matter how many wins you get. That would be unfair.
West coast finished last season in 13th place, so our 'double-up' games would have been against GC, GWS, St Kilda, Melbourne and WB. That's almost 10 wins guaranteed. Let's say we drop a couple, so 8 wins without breaking sweat. Currently, 11 wins gets you a top 8 spot. So we would just have to find 3 more wins to get a spot in the finals. Assuming we won all 10, it would all but guarantee us a spot in the final 8.

Better to have seeded groups,
1 4 7 10 13 16
2 5 8 11 14 17
3 6 9 12 15 18

No group is much stronger or weaker than another.
 
Great idea but won't happen (or at least not properly) because you can't possibly have only one Derby, one Showdown, one Coll v Carl, etc etc etc in a season. The world wouldn't survive it.

This is correct. I think the current TV rights deal would specify the number of "blockbuster" games required. It will only happen if the AFL starts putting the game ahead of the $.
 

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I fail to see how this would really be radically different from what we have now, with 2 derbies, everyone playing each other once, and the additional games based on last year's finish.

The same distortions apply, in that with the current system a team that underperformed last year gets a more favourable draw (see: West Coast), whereas with the proposed system a team that underperformed early in the season gets a more favourable draw (see: Richmond). You're swapping one downside for a slightly different but still as-impactful one.

More generally, as for the point of 'making sure the last couple of rounds still mean something', I think that's a ludicrous suggestion given the top 5 are still in flux, and there are still theoretically 4 teams battling for 8th.

At the beginning of each season you start fresh .... after 17rds you have all played each other once and where the card lies after those rounds is how you have qualified for the seeding. Under-performing any time during this 17rd "season" has the same consequences. You are thereafter split into your conferences and competing with similarly qualified teams which means you will have evenly matched games with meaningful consequences. As opposed to games late in seasons where 1st place 18th and the inevitability of the result makes it close to pointless playing.
 
The point of playing for draft picks has never made sense to me. We want the worst team to get the best pick.

That's the bit I'm not sure about either in regards to the bottom 6 play-offs. Possibility is to reverse the points at the end of 17 rounds maybe. So if the 13th team is 3 games ahead of the 18th team, the 18th team gets a 3 game headstart come round 18. Means the 13th team has to win 4 more games be to ahead of the 18th team to get a better draft pick. Not so easy to do in 5 games. It's all I can think of to give the bottom six something to play for and keep it as fair as possible at the same time for the bottom team.
 
So, in theory, the team in 13th spot could end up winning more games for the season than 1st, yet be locked into 13th (supposing, as unlikely as it is, all teams are separated by percentage only after the initial 17 games).

No thanks.
 
If it aint broken, don't fix it. Seriously, some of these ideas are just ludicrous, the actual impact of the draw on the season is minimal. If you're good enough to win a premiership, it doesn't matter which teams you play. Sure, some teams will get lucky some years, and some unlucky, but in the grand scheme of things, the lucky teams aren't good enough for finals, so it doesn't matter.
 

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I would love if this were to happen. My first preference would be a 17 game season but that's not going to happen and this is the next best thing.
 
Every team plays each other once per season and then you have 5 return fixtures based of grouping teams on last years ladder

Easy fix problem solved and pay me my commission Gil

Nice idea but teams will get better or worse. It would hardly be fair if two teams were vying for top 4 and one had to face the best 5 teams from last year and the other the bottom 5.
 
So, in theory, the team in 13th spot could end up winning more games for the season than 1st, yet be locked into 13th (supposing, as unlikely as it is, all teams are separated by percentage only after the initial 17 games).

No thanks.

Love how people take a concept and take an incredibly unlikely event and use it to suit an argument.

I love this idea.

Play everyone once and have positions sorted in brackets is perfect. Play teams in your bracket again to jostle for positions. There is no flaw in this system because whatever argument you have is ended by the statement 'everyone has played everyone once and it is fair as of that time'.

If we must have 22 rounds this is as fair as you'd want it.

Complaining that you might be 13th and start a crazy run to the finals only happens now because of the uneven draw

Eliminates the whole 'soft' draw rubbish that goes on.

Huge thumbs up from me and only bettered by having a 17 round season.
 
But that in itself is not fair. Imagine if just by any year you end up playing the 6 bottom teams twice and it gifts you a top 4 draw and you can rest players all through the season. The end result is you get a major leg up to win the premiership that year.

Making it seeded each year makes it fairer because then each team is on some sort of level playing ground than making a rolling fixture.

Divisions are the other way to make it fair but you have to be confident that there isn't ingrained inequity in the divisions. With 18 teams and 10 based in Melbourne that's pretty hard to do.

It is fair because it is completely random with no outside interference. Nothing can gurantee a completely equitable draw for all teams, not conferences, groupings, previous year's results, et al. With my method it is complete chance that determines whether any particular team's draw can be assessed as hard/easy/fair. Over time things will balance out. I believe it will also give the perennial also rans like the Dogs a better chance to improve by evening up their travel requirements to match say Collingwood who seem to spend more time in Arizona than the other states of Australia.
 
If it aint broken, don't fix it. Seriously, some of these ideas are just ludicrous, the actual impact of the draw on the season is minimal. If you're good enough to win a premiership, it doesn't matter which teams you play. Sure, some teams will get lucky some years, and some unlucky, but in the grand scheme of things, the lucky teams aren't good enough for finals, so it doesn't matter.

It is broken though. The fixture, as it currently stands, is rigged. I agree that it's not likely to have a massive impact on the ladder, but you can't argue that it has some impact. For that reason it needs to change if the AFL values integrity at all.
 

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Finally some fixture sense from the AFL


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