World Footy News

The AFL’s ability to remain Australia’s numero uno football code has been the issue of much debate recently. Each of Australia’s four major football leagues, AFL (Australian football), A-League (soccer), NRL (Rugby League) and Super 14 (Rugby Union) have outlined their expansion plans for the near future.

The AFL came good on plans to introduce a Gold Coast club (following the Kangaroos rejection of an offer to move north). Joining them will be a new Western Sydney club. These development plans were unanimously supported by the existing 16 clubs, with the Queenslanders expected to join the league in 2011, followed by the New South Welshmen in 2012 (though a simultaneous launch is possible). Following the AFL’s call, the FFA offered two new A-League licenses for the 2008-09 seasons, which were eventually awarded to the Gold Coast and Townsville. The FFA has since postponed the expansion due to doubts about financing the new clubs (however a more recent update suggests that when the A-League does expand it may add four new licenses, fast-tracking the second Sydney and Melbourne clubs). The NRL announced they were discussing the feasibility of expansion into the Central Coast, Sunshine Coast, Wellington, west of Brisbane and Australian football-stronghold, Perth. The Super 14 could also become the Super 15, with SANZAR considering a new Japan-based club comprised predominantly of local and Argentinean players.

Whilst some of the expansion plans could be considered unrealistic, at least in the short term, they suggest that this challenge to the AFL will not be short-lived. The question of whether all four codes can survive at a professional level has even been raised. This article looks at my suggestions for the AFL for the next 25 years.

Some of you will recall one of my previous opinion pieces, which focused on Australian football in Victoria, and in particular the health of the AFL competition there. In it I urged the unprofitable clubs to move to locations yearning for AFL representation and supported an 18 team competition. Yet following the Kangaroos' rejection of the AFL’s relocation offer and looking at the rival codes’ expansion plans I feel I may have expected too much of the Melbourne teams and been too limited in my own expansion suggestions.

The AFL can't continue to prop-up clubs, especially when the money could be better spent developing new clubs in areas able to more comfortably support them. Yet at the same time you can't 'expect' Melbourne fans to want their clubs to relocate to the Gold Coast, or Sydney or Tasmania and possibly compromise their history in the process. So how can we satisy both?

My solution

Firstly I revise my stance on the issue; I no longer believe that Melbourne cannot support nine teams. I do believe they cannot support the teams in their current format however. Round one saw a total of 267,625 fans pass through the gates of the six matches in Melbourne. That’s an average of almost 45,000 fans per game. Whilst the round was the first ‘proper’ match in around 6 months, with all clubs starting from a fresh slate, it shows that the fans are out there, and they just need to be encouraged to attend more frequently.

A club’s performance has a big effect on crowd size (which might not be an issue for clubs with 35,000+ members, but it is for the less-supported teams in Melbourne). How many fans of an underperforming club can be expected to attend their next home match, and likely see their side defeated? And can you blame them? Football matches cost money and if bad weather is forecast this will only further damage attendance. At the same time, supporters of the rival team may too be off put. As much as they love their club, excitement is often built on a close game, or at least an evenly balanced one. While the match might still turn out this way, statistics suggest it won’t and I can take a good guess that those considering attending will take into account what should happen, not what could happen.

So knowing that fans attend matches when their team is at least competitive, how can you structure the competition to be as equitable as possible, without doctoring matches, and bearing in mind that there are still regions of Australia that remain unrepresented in the AFL?

My suggestion is a 24 team competition split over two divisions (considering the time-frame that I suggest, this would require careful planning and to be implemented in several stages). The two divisions would be equal. Either the winner of each division could face off in the Grand Final (each division having contested their own finals series), or the top teams of each division could contest a joint finals series. The ten Victorian clubs would be split equally, with the likes of Essendon, Carlton, Geelong, Collingwood and Richmond together, due to the blockbusters they contest annually. New AFL clubs, based in regions yearning for a team, would round out the division. Teams from the same State (with the exception of Victoria) would be kept in the same division where possible. This gives States with fewer teams a greater probability of finals action.

The other division would be comprised of most of the current non-Victorian teams (Adelaide, Port Adelaide, West Coast, Fremantle, Brisbane, Sydney) and those Melbourne clubs that have traditionally drawn smaller crowds (North Melbourne, Melbourne, Western Bulldogs) or those which aren’t involved in a ‘Blockbuster’ with a fellow Victorian club (St. Kilda, Hawthorn).

This way, not only are traditional blockbusters maintained, but rivalries could develop between those Melbourne clubs in the ‘other’ division. Furthermore all matches in the finals series should draw bumper crowds. If a joint finals series was contested, clubs mightn't have played each other in several years, or in the case of the new clubs, might never have faced off. By having 24 clubs participate you allow for new clubs in regions like Tasmania, an additional club in Western Australia and a stronger presence in New South Wales and Queensland (for sustainability, on the proviso that they embrace our game – the test will be the new club each state is about to receive). The additional New South Wales teams could be nearby to Sydney (such as Newcastle or Wollongong), allowing them their own identity, but a large mass of people to draw for additional support. A Top End side (perhaps spread across Northern Western Australia, the Northern Territory and Northern Queensland – with support and talent from Papua New Guinea) or a New Zealand side could also be investigated.

24 teams would also allow a 22-round season to be maintained, and would be more equitable with one home and one away game. Due to there only being 12 teams in each division, talent-wise the gap between top and bottom of the ladder would hopefully be reduced, margins narrower and the likelihood of playing in the finals series greater.

More clubs require more players and a greater opportunity for Australian footballers at home and around the globe. Whilst some would see the required players as too great a drain on resources, as New South Wales and Queensland further embrace Australian football, you would expect a greater number of players to be sourced from the region. More games should also equate to a greater price paid for the television rights, and two divisions, means that the AFL could sell the rights for each division separately (indeed it would be difficult for one network to show 12 games on a weekend).

There are some fans (mostly in Victoria) that dislike expansion plans for the AFL, and I feel it is important to remind them of the following:

1. It's no longer the VFL, so inevitably some features of the league that remain focused on Victoria will need to change. The league has lost some of its 'community feel' as it is now a national league. There is much that needs to be done in improving each of the state leagues, particularly Victoria's, and this should be done concurrently.
2. The AFL does face a threat from other sports. It's not a matter of "if it ain't broke don't fix it", rather are we prepared to be left behind by resting on our laurels? We need look no further than our own game for an example - how frequently does a team lose or nearly lose a match by trying to protect its lead and run down the clock, rather than play the game. And how ugly is it from a spectators perspective!
3. We mightn't be able to afford to take a dive and rebuild like soccer has done. Whilst they have very successfully rebuilt from the ground up, their teams didn't have the history that some of the AFL clubs do. And whilst I'm really keen to see Australian football as a truly global game, at the moment it isn't - soccer was, and this greatly improved their chances of success with Australia's multicultural society.

Whatever path the AFL takes, I hope that Australians continue to embrace Australian football.