There’s no doubt so many late finishes have impacted on our players. Their body clocks have been thrown right out of kilter, affecting their ability to recover from injuries. These late starts have also had an impact on our crowds this year because young families don’t come to night games.
Four years ago I put forward an idea that the AFL’s marketing people are now looking to take up. No doubt the implementation of the innovation has been helped by the support of people like Dr Allen Aylett, who when he read his copy of The Weekend Australian a few years ago said it was the best idea he had ever heard of and that I should persevere with. That’s not a bad comment from the man who helped give us the national league!
The idea is to have Anzac Day Blockbusters all around the country. So, as well as Collingwood against Essendon in Melbourne, the Dockers will play the West Coast in Perth, the local derby will be played in Adelaide and Sydney and Brisbane will play each other.
Encouraged by all this, I am going to float another idea and hope it doesn’t take four years to hit the target. The AFL marketing people have already identified the rugby union world cup next year as a threat to our game. The threat comes in losses of sponsorships, attendances and possibly young hearts and minds that might be channeled into a game invented in England instead of the Australian one. Let’s not see this as a threat, but rather as an opportunity.
Let’s go head to head with the rugby union world cup, and while we’re believing in ourselves, let’s do the same with the rugby league State of Origin series. Let’s play a Rest –v- the Best match in Sydney at Stadium Australia right in the middle of the various rugby show-pieces.
It will be the first time in 100 years that we have been able to put on the field to play Australian football, not International rules, the best 22 Australian footballers in the land.
If the AFL marketing people couldn’t sell that, they couldn’t sell water to a bloke dying of thirst. All the rugby league people do with their showcase is put the best two teams they can on the field. Australian football can also do that, even though inter-state football has gone from our game.
Some of the early results of inter-state games were so embarassing for the teams from South Australia and Western Australia that the AFL deleted them from its handbook for 2002.
Those lopsided results showed the gulf between today's AFL and the other leagues is even greater; further proof Wayne Jackson's decision to change the father/son rule in the AFL. A father now has to have played 100 games instead of the previous 50 - is wrong.
Apparently Wayne has been telling everyone that in the SANFL it is 200 games before a father and son are eligible. But there are many people who played a lot of games in the SANFL who couldn’t make it in the old VFL, so we not comparing apples with apples.
Graeme Cornes came and tried for one season. Russell Ebert won four Magarey Medals but didn’t make it in Victoria. Glynn Hewitt, Lleyton’s dad, played hundreds of SANFL games for three clubs but could only reach 15 in the VFL for Richmond. I suppose one Malcolm Blight makes up for these blokes a bit but … The changes made to the father/son rules are dumb.
Everyone in football knows they are unnecessary, especially the supporters. I will harp on about this until the rule is changed back.
