World Footy News

Kevin Sheedy, legendary AFL coach and future coach of the 18th AFL club, Greater Western Sydney, has put forward the idea of an 11-per-side tournament to replace the NAB Cup, the AFL's pre-season series. And he reckons it could have an international flavour:

"It might encourage other countries to find 15 young players in say USA, Japan, Great Britain, Ireland or South Africa. They could come out and have a crack at it".

Sheeds has said the Rugby 7s in Hong Kong was his inspiration, although he has been heavily exposed to international Australian football, where the concept of reduced numbers games has been regularly applied for many years, especially across the United States and Europe. His idea also is very similar to a proposal put forward by worldfootynews.com to the AFL and also partially published online. So certainly then some of us here think the concept has plenty of merit.

Sheedy's suggestion, published as AFL's answer to rugby sevens includes:

• 11-a-side
• $1 million prize pool
• three-day event
• play it at ANZ Stadium, Western Sydney
• play it on whatever size ground you like

Some of those areas have been explored before in international footy. And the proposal put forward by WFN as a comment on the story 7-a-side debuts in Sydney women's league and also similarly put to the AFL included some very similar key points plus some additional ideas:

• NAB Cup 9s
• lightning tournament style
• maybe several nights of matches at several grounds
• short games
• 9-a-side on smaller ground (or could trial full field say 14-a-side)
• multiple matches at one ground in a given night
• whole tournament last 2 weeks instead of usual NAB Cup 4 weeks
• 1 week of normal 18s trial games

This type of design leaves the pre-season 1 week shorter and far less intensive, and gives multiple short matches for each side but it still leaves playing some of the nights at regional venues as viable. Chuck in 9 point supergoals, golden goal for draws, maybe 2x15 min halves, maybe 1 "burst mode" for each team per game in which you can send on 1 extra player for 5 minutes (and the other team can't copy in the same 5 mins), some fireworks etc and you've got the Aussie Rules version of Twenty20 cricket. Gimmicky, but a bit of fun and draws attention to reduced player number formats.

Given the small crowds, general dissatisfaction with the current NAB Cup, and a need to shorten the pre-season competition when the 17th and 18th clubs join, something resembling either of those models could be the answer the AFL is looking for.