Remake the AFL as it should have been in 1987 - yes its the offseason...

[Johnny Bananas]

Supposing there wasn't just a VFL takeover like in reality, the only fair way to assign teams is by population. The 1987 populations of heartland AFL cities were:

Melbourne - 3 million
Perth - 1.1 million
Adelaide - 1 million

If we go roughly by a team per 500 000 people, this would leave 6 clubs in Melbourne, 2 clubs in Perth and 2 in Adelaide, and let's say 4 other clubs from the rest of the country. After assigning a number of clubs per city/region, I would have had a bidding process for the licences, and encouraged existing clubs to band together to bid for licences, unless they thought they were big and powerful enough to go it alone. And gently advised clubs if their bid wasn't strong enough, to get as many clubs as possible to have a stake in the new competition.

Probably would have ended with:

Perth City (Perth, East Perth, West Perth, Swan and Subiaco)
Fremantle (the two Fremantles plus Claremont)
Adelaide (some combo of SANFL clubs)
Port Adelaide (maybe a joint bid with WT and/or Wests)
Carlton
Collingwood
Essendon
Richmond
Melbourne (joint bid of Melbourne, Footscray, North and Fitzroy)
East Melbourne (joint bid of Hawthorn and St Kilda)
Geelong
Sydney
Brisbane
Canberra or Tasmania

Really not all that different to what it ended up being. There's a reason the AFL has gone from strength to strength in a financial and media attention sense, the clubs have largely been placed in the right areas. The only real inefficiency has been too many small Melbourne clubs, but revenue sharing has allowed them to survive in the modern day, and we're better off for it, Fitzroy aside.

 

[Philth]

14 teams only? Ok.
A few notes on my league -
1. No Tassie team. It's been proven time and time again that it's just not viable.
2. No Canberra team - I'd rather keep a Vic club in the big league than create some soulless franchise for the sake of it, in a small city.
3. I'm assuming that Fitzroy and Brisbane merge to create the Lions we have now.
4. Vic teams have the option to merge or play in the new VFL. No-one wanted to merge, so the 2 teams with the smallest fanbase/revenue are relegated to the VFL.

New AFL =

West Coast
Fremantle
Adelaide
Port
Sydney
Brisbane
Carlton
Collingwood
Essendon
Geelong
Hawthorn
Melbourne
Richmond
St Kilda.

Bulldogs and North join the VFL.

Queensland and NSW have only one strong team each, no teams in GC etc, for the same reason as Canberra.

Just a bit of fun, go easy on me!!

 

[Boxhead_31]

I felt SA needs a 3rd team, whichever the 3rd biggest team would be, that should be it. Maybe the Crows/composite afterall.

As for Hawthorn, StKilda etc, it's all about demographics. You can't judge a team's popularity by how successful it is, Crows and Richmond are a good example of that. Whenever Hawks have had bad periods (in performance), they have been in trouble, they almost merged with Melbourne! This will continue to happen, they are going well right now and maybe for a while, but their next down period will show where they're at.

OC said the league could only be 14 teams though

 

[WillHayward]

It got me thinking of players that we may never have seen at the top level (Doug Hawkins, Tony Lockett

Tony Lockett

Age

58

Ht

191cm

Wt

108kg

Pos.

Fwd

Career

Season

Last 5

D

10.2

3star

K

8.4

3star

HB

1.8

2star

M

6.3

5star

T

0.5

3star

G

4.8

5star

No current season stats available

D

8.2

2star

K

5.6

3star

HB

2.6

3star

M

4.0

4star

T

0.0

1star

G

1.4

5star

) and players we may have (Barry Robran).

A young plugger was tearing it up in Ballarat. Wouldnt have been v hard for him to get to Essendon or Geelong at that time.
Easier than Moorabbin.

 

[HairyO]

Eventhough at our worst in the mid 90s we didnt merge, at our peak in the 80s people see us merging with St Kilda?

Pies hadnt won a flag in decades. Merge them with the Saints and Demons. The Colkildourne Pints.

 

[Gibbke]

Quite possibly one of the dumbest takes I've seen.

How does Pro/Rel have no place in civilised society? How exactly is it sh*t?

F### you, just a stupid response on your part. Anyone thinks PR would help footy has their head up their arse. If you want your comp to suffer huge imbalances, create a system where the top teams can demand the lion's share of money and the best players, and once they establish an advantage they can keep it forever. This is exactly what has happened in every soccer league that uses it, in countries that call it their no.1 sport. The only way anyone outside the big firm in any league can ever hope to fight for a title is with a huge cash injection - and in this country, a tiny by world standards sport like Australian football would suffer loss after loss after loss, as teams pack it in. England brought it in because they had tons of amateur teams and not that far to travel - once the money started dictating terms, then the top 10 of 92 took over...and many others fell by the wayside. In other countries, only two or three have any hope of winning...most of the season is filler...

The only thing that works in this country is a socialist approach. It's no coincidence that two countries who have adopted salary capping, drafting and equalisation - the USA and Australia - have seen their teams protected and anyone able to win the comp with no greater advantage than some good list management. The salary cap and draft would have to be layered to accommodate the attractiveness of the team, and once you're in the lower division you have nothing to bargain with. You'll stay there. Tv networks argue over the fixture now, so imagine the spite if Seven get one too many second div matches. I follow Wolves - I get to see my team plundered by the big boys who can buy them off, as does my Southampton supporting co-worker...a big downer watching Jota running around with Liverpool...and if they get relegated they get a huge payout to help soften the blow of a stint in the lower division. A s**t system which promotes inequality...

One day, you will see the mega clubs of Europe do the currently unthinkable, and ditch their respective leagues. They're agitating now, but they just won't commit to a proper breakaway. They will say "f### this, we at Liverpool want to be fronting up against Juventus or Barca the week after playing Man C, not frigging Torquay, and we want to make billions as a matter of course". You will have a Euro super league, and you can bet your arse there will be no PR to dilute it...

 

[Gibbke]

It’s okay, it’s just a make-believe situation.

Though promotion and relegation totally underpins the world’s biggest sport internationally, so to say it has no place is pretty funny. If you ensure clubs are properly funded and costs taken care of - which inevitably means splitting money a little more fairly down the pyramid, as England are now finding out - then of course it can work.

It was there at the start when everyone was an amateur. It became an anachronism almost immediately once money ran the show. You either need to be the old firm or get yourself a Russion billionaire to have any hope of winning the premiership today, so saying "it works" definitely requires some defining of what "working" actually looks like. And how long before the big teams, who already grizzle like Eddie about bringing in the big bucks to share with others, actually put their money where their mouths are and get a bit more heavy handed? If Liverpool, Man U/C, a few others, Barca, Bayern, Juventus, etc all decided to commit to a mega league, what would stop them? No tv network on the planet would turn them down, no player would boycott them, no sponsor would walk away...an inevitability, and PR won't be added to the contract. PR might be part of the world's biggest sport, but the most viable sporting teams and leagues are American, where none of that exists. And the notion that Australia could handle leagues made up of teams handicapped by the constraints of not being top tier is fanciful at best...

It was never going to be anything but the VFL, people...

 

[ShadeyP]

Supposing there wasn't just a VFL takeover like in reality, the only fair way to assign teams is by population. The 1987 populations of heartland AFL cities were:

Melbourne - 3 million
Perth - 1.1 million
Adelaide - 1 million

If we go roughly by a team per 500 000 people, this would leave 6 clubs in Melbourne, 2 clubs in Perth and 2 in Adelaide, and let's say 4 other clubs from the rest of the country. After assigning a number of clubs per city/region, I would have had a bidding process for the licences, and encouraged existing clubs to band together to bid for licences, unless they thought they were big and powerful enough to go it alone. And gently advised clubs if their bid wasn't strong enough, to get as many clubs as possible to have a stake in the new competition.

Probably would have ended with:

Perth City (Perth, East Perth, West Perth, Swan and Subiaco)
Fremantle (the two Fremantles plus Claremont)
Adelaide (some combo of SANFL clubs)
Port Adelaide (maybe a joint bid with WT and/or Wests)
Carlton
Collingwood
Essendon
Richmond
Melbourne (joint bid of Melbourne, Footscray, North and Fitzroy)
East Melbourne (joint bid of Hawthorn and St Kilda)
Geelong
Sydney
Brisbane
Canberra or Tasmania

Really not all that different to what it ended up being. There's a reason the AFL has gone from strength to strength in a financial and media attention sense, the clubs have largely been placed in the right areas. The only real inefficiency has been too many small Melbourne clubs, but revenue sharing has allowed them to survive in the modern day, and we're better off for it, Fitzroy aside.

Melbourne Population is 5 Million or a shade under .

 

[Bunk Moreland]

It was there at the start when everyone was an amateur. It became an anachronism almost immediately once money ran the show. You either need to be the old firm or get yourself a Russion billionaire to have any hope of winning the premiership today, so saying "it works" definitely requires some defining of what "working" actually looks like. And how long before the big teams, who already grizzle like Eddie about bringing in the big bucks to share with others, actually put their money where their mouths are and get a bit more heavy handed? If Liverpool, Man U/C, a few others, Barca, Bayern, Juventus, etc all decided to commit to a mega league, what would stop them? No tv network on the planet would turn them down, no player would boycott them, no sponsor would walk away...an inevitability, and PR won't be added to the contract. PR might be part of the world's biggest sport, but the most viable sporting teams and leagues are American, where none of that exists. And the notion that Australia could handle leagues made up of teams handicapped by the constraints of not being top tier is fanciful at best...

It was never going to be anything but the VFL, people...

None of these problems you talk about are promotion and relegation. I think you’re a little confused.

 

[telsor]

Melbourne Population is 5 Million or a shade under .

He's talking historical population.

 

[telsor]

4. Vic teams have the option to merge or play in the new VFL. No-one wanted to merge, so the 2 teams with the smallest fanbase/revenue are relegated to the VFL.

A couple of times things got close. In a situation where it was clear that merge or get relegated were the only options, I think a couple of clubs could have suddenly discovered a level of flexibility they didn't have when they had other options.

Otherwise, pretty much right.

 

[telsor]

Eventhough at our worst in the mid 90s we didnt merge, at our peak in the 80s people see us merging with St Kilda?

Pies hadnt won a flag in decades. Merge them with the Saints and Demons. The Colkildourne Pints.

Hawthorn came closer to merging than most.

Add in the extra pressure of knowing that some clubs weren't going to make the cut, and I think most clubs would be looking at all their options closely.

 

[Johnny Bananas]

Melbourne Population is 5 Million or a shade under .

The 1987 populations of heartland AFL cities were:

Melbourne - 3 million
Perth - 1.1 million
Adelaide - 1 million

 

[HairyO]

Hawthorn came closer to merging than most.

Add in the extra pressure of knowing that some clubs weren't going to make the cut, and I think most clubs would be looking at all their options closely.

The only way Hawks would merge is if the VFL /AFL deliberately crippled them and gifted the poor clubs tens of millions over many years.

Tigers were bankrupt at one point and with horrible membership numbers. They would have been more likely in the 80s.

 

[Gibbke]

None of these problems you talk about are promotion and relegation. I think you’re a little confused.

I got bored with this and went to work. The point is that PR denies equalisation, and therefore threatens the viability of any team not bringing demographic or pot luck advantages to the table. This is clearly written in the other post I put up. The soccer teams in the top flight will one day tire of this situation, and close ranks to monopolise the profit...they will say "f### this, why do we have to hang out with these losers?"...

Soccer can survive this. Thing is, Australian footy can not, which is why every single suggestion anyone here has made that isn't Expanded VFL is fanciful at best. The entire point of VFL and NSWRL expansion was to ensure teams survive, and much less any grand visions of nationwide sporting utopia. Non-Vics know this, they grumble about it all the time, which is why some of these suggestions get more than the token nod they deserve. I can be historically romantic in football terms - dude, I'm Tasmanian, it's the only weapon we've got, apparently - but none of it counts for s**t in the unique sporting environment of this country (vast geography, parochial sporting interests such as two adjacent states actively eschewing each other's preferred footy code, many elite sports all vying for funding, the dominant sport having no worldwide pull, and the relatively small population to support it all)...never mind we're hypothesising about a league starting in 1987, the year of the stock market crash which would have destroyed most of these ventures on the ground...

And on top of these handicaps, you want to add PR, which cements the inequalities of the problems addressed by, and is completely incompatible with, the socialist policies that the big sports have adopted in this country to ensure the survival of sporting franchises...policies which have met with remarkable success. The people pushing for PR are probably the same ones who grizzle about blockbusters and want a "fair fixture"...great, hope there's plenty of fruit on the Magical Money Tree, because it won't be coming from tv...

 

[Pykie]

14 teams only? Ok.
A few notes on my league -
1. No Tassie team. It's been proven time and time again that it's just not viable.
2. No Canberra team - I'd rather keep a Vic club in the big league than create some soulless franchise for the sake of it, in a small city.
3. I'm assuming that Fitzroy and Brisbane merge to create the Lions we have now.
4. Vic teams have the option to merge or play in the new VFL. No-one wanted to merge, so the 2 teams with the smallest fanbase/revenue are relegated to the VFL.

New AFL =

West Coast
Fremantle
Adelaide
Port
Sydney
Brisbane
Carlton
Collingwood
Essendon
Geelong
Hawthorn
Melbourne
Richmond
St Kilda.

Bulldogs and North join the VFL.

Queensland and NSW have only one strong team each, no teams in GC etc, for the same reason as Canberra.

Just a bit of fun, go easy on me!!

Sorry, you may be a little bit young.

But there's no chance in hell in 1987 St Kilda or Footscray make an AFL league over North.

North made 5 x GF's in the 70's and made prelims in the 80's.

St Kilda won 7 Wooden Spoons between 77-88 and hadn't made the finals in over 15 years in 1987.

 

[Papa G]

Bulldogs and North merge. Melbourne and Saints merge.

More grassroots support for GWS and Gold Coast.

Add a Tassie team

Have a genuinely fair comp with all decisions not just made in the interests of the Big Victorian clubs.

Rolling draw to iron out as best as possible the inequities in it.

Get rid of Channel 7 as the broadcaster.

Equals Perfect competition.

 

[telsor]

Bulldogs and North merge. Melbourne and Saints merge.

More grassroots support for GWS and Gold Coast.

Add a Tassie team

Have a genuinely fair comp with all decisions not just made in the interests of the Big Victorian clubs.

Rolling draw to iron out as best as possible the inequities in it.

Get rid of Channel 7 as the broadcaster.

Equals Perfect competition.

How does this 'genuinely fair' comp work?

What would it take for you to be satisfied and stop your complaints and conspiracy theories?

 

[telsor]

Sorry, you may be a little bit young.

But there's no chance in hell in 1987 St Kilda or Footscray make an AFL league over North.

North made 5 x GF's in the 70's and made prelims in the 80's.

St Kilda won 7 Wooden Spoons between 77-88 and hadn't made the finals in over 15 years in 1987.

Such decisions have less to do with success as they do finances and fan base.

North was definitely in the mix for merger discussions at the time and as I recall had some fairly serious chats with Fitzroy.

 

[Pykie]

Such decisions have less to do with success as they do finances and fan base.

North was definitely in the mix for merger discussions at the time and as I recall had some fairly serious chats with Fitzroy.

That was in 1996 mate.

Fitzroy agreed to merge with Footscray in in 1985 and then had been ticked off by the league to play in 1990 as the Fitzroy Bulldogs.

They almost merged with St Kilda in 1986.

Melbourne explored a merger with Fitzroy in 1985 and then again in 1994. Then obviously voted in favour of a merger with Hawthorn in 1996.

Collingwood almost went under in 86/87.

Richmond were just about bankrupt in the late 80's and had save our skins in 1990.


Richmonds average crowd in 1987 - 17,000.

Norths average crowd in 1987 - 21,000.


There's a lot of revisionism in this thread from some younger people in here.

 

[Philth]

Sorry, you may be a little bit young.

But there's no chance in hell in 1987 St Kilda or Footscray make an AFL league over North.

North made 5 x GF's in the 70's and made prelims in the 80's.

St Kilda won 7 Wooden Spoons between 77-88 and hadn't made the finals in over 15 years in 1987.

Fair enough mate, cheers.

 

[telsor]

That was in 1996 mate.

Fitzroy agreed to merge with Footscray in in 1985 and then had been ticked off by the league to play in 1990 as the Fitzroy Bulldogs.

They almost merged with St Kilda in 1986.

Melbourne explored a merger with Fitzroy in 1985 and then again in 1994. Then obviously voted in favour of a merger with Hawthorn in 1996.

Collingwood almost went under in 86/87.

Richmond were just about bankrupt in the late 80's and had save our skins in 1990.


Richmonds average crowd in 1987 - 17,000.

Norths average crowd in 1987 - 21,000.


There's a lot of revisionism in this thread from some younger people in here.

Even at their peak in the 80s, North was considered a small club, merger speculation included them even then. In 1986, they changed their ownership to shares in order to generate some money, and in 1991 was almost bought by Carlton as a result. Does that sound like a big, financially secure club?

Richmond and Collingwood almost went bankrupt because they went to war with each other. No other clubs could have survived that war, but as a result, merger discussions definitely included Richmond.

As for save our skins...In many ways, that was a measure of the support the club had. Would your club have been able to raise nearly as much? Except for Collingwood, I doubt many would have come close.

As for those crowd numbers...North came 4th that year, Richmond last. If you take out the final you played (in front of 72K) so as to compare like for like, you only averaged 1389 more...hardly impressive given the results.

 

[glengowan]

SA in 1987 may have had the following percentages of support?

Port - 25%, Norwood - 15%, Sturt - 12%, Glenelg - 10%, North - 10%, Torrens - 8%, Central - 8%, West - 5%, South - 5%, Woodville - 2%

In a large national competition, it may have made sense to have Port, Norwood and a Composite team. I think they got it right though in terms of just the Composite team (Crows) and Port.

I didn't realise Southport applied for the licence in the 80's. Could've saved a lot of trouble just having them as Queensland's club, with Brisbane to follow.

The South Melbourne move to Sydney has proved to be a good one.

Tasmania deserve their own side.

West Coast and Fremantle seem to have worked well in WA?

Then the big Vic clubs of the 80's - Collingwood, Hawthorn, Carlton, Essendon, Richmond, Geelong. The rest to the VFA.

So you now have a national competition consisting of 14 clubs, probably with a view of adding a Western Sydney team and the strongest VFA club (or composition of clubs) to the national competition.

Collingwood
Hawthorn
Carlton
Essendon
Richmond
Geelong
Port Adelaide
Adelaide
West Coast
Fremantle
Southport
Brisbane
Tasmania
Sydney

 

[Virus]

Sturt & Norwood merged and named Adelaide is what should’ve really happened. At least they wouldn’t be plastic.