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AFL fixture facing evolution | The Leadership Portfolio with Luke Hodge (23.06.26)
22 Jun 2026
Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.
Chapter 1: What potential changes are being discussed for the AFL fixture?
Anthony started with mid-season tournament, F off. Good on you, Anthony. Thanks for leading us all. Hello to you, Hodgie.
Morning, Gerard. Whenever something new gets thrown up, I think that's the mindset of a lot of people because it's the fear of the unknown and they want change, but they don't want to change it too much. I think that's the common mindset for anyone out there until they actually get it explained to them very clearly. And I guess for me, I scrapped option one straight away.
As soon as I saw there was no Gather Round, I was like, no, it's out for me because I love Gather Round. I think we're taking the kids over there again next year.
Chapter 2: How does the introduction of Tasmania affect the AFL competition?
So that was the clear out for myself. I would like a little bit more explanation or a bit more understanding on option three. When it gets into your four different groups, top 16 gets split individually.
I'd like to look at that a little bit more because that sort of raises, that's sort of, you push into your overseas markets and you sort of say you have different categories and I'd want to know more about who could jump up if someone's had battles. So you look at Sydney last year, And they had a big run towards the end. They had a lot of injuries early on.
They blanketed just to the wildcard options if they're in the bottom part of those 16. So that's something that intrigues me. My natural instinct would be go to option two. And then the play-in one, I think I was a little bit the same time. How is that going to work? And we all know players and the clubs will manipulate to what they want.
So if the playing tournament comes and they're looking pretty cherry ripe for the AFL season, are they going to put out their best plays during this in-season tournament? These are the natural things that will come to my head when we throw in something different because, as we know, if we don't know much about it, the main fact for us is there's a Premiership Cup on the last Saturday in September.
That's a little bit later next year. But the last game for our season is... that's the big focus because ultimately that's what we get rated on. We get rated on who is going to hold that Premiership Cup on on the last game of our season. It will take a big change or better explanation of what this in-season tournament will do, just like the NBA one.
That didn't seem much until you see LeBron James holding it up maybe because it was a $500,000 check to every player who won that and every staff member. But yeah, I'd have to have a bit more of an understanding and I think our natural...
as sports lovers who loves the game, that's just like the ANZAC Cup pre-season stuff because we won't rate it because it's not the big premiership title that we're looking at.
Yes. So do you think it's possible culturally to establish a second trophy? So this is not unique as the FA Cup most readily comes to mind. And it used to be in a time before your career that there was a second trophy which did have cachet. Do you think it's possible? Or I think it's highly unlikely we'll go with option four.
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Chapter 3: What are the different options for the AFL fixture being considered?
Do you think it's possible to create a second trophy that has any pull in our competition?
I think anything's possible. But I think with the culture that we've set, I go back and look at Grant Thomas and Lenny Hayes when they won the preseason cup. How many times have you heard Dermy being introduced as five-day, five-night? That was a big thing. The night premiership, the preseason premiership, was something you used to hold to.
And Dermy gets introduced that way, five-day, five-night. It was just as important as the... is the end of season one. And then you look at Grant Thomas and Lenny Hayes standing there with the pre-season cup going, this is nothing because do you know what?
We get remembered for the one that in the last Saturday in September, I think that's the culture that people have brainwashed into the younger guys coming through. And I think that's how my generation definitely think at the moment, like the pre-season games are,
when I was coming through the back end of my career was, okay, you do enough minutes to make sure that you're cherry ripe for round one. So that's the main, that's the starting line for us. So there's got to be a big cultural change and a mindset change if anything is going to be introduced in regards to another Another trophy that means something to the players, the club, all the supporters.
So your leaning is option two? Option two, I'd love to get a more understanding of option three because that intrigues me.
Yeah, I have a slight leaning to option three in what we've seen so far. Jake from Mill Park, if they want to play less games and shorten the game time, no, maybe I didn't explain it properly, Jake. That's not it. You'll get more games. and a nip and tuck on the game time. Otherwise, the game time will be untouched. So you're not going to get less and less.
You'll get more, and the trade-off will be a little bit less.
And I think that's what the AFL and the PA have been asking for, less game time, because you see these longer quarters, and you talk about the injury lists. People want to see their best players playing. And if they can shorten a quarter by five minutes, 20 minutes total for a game, it's going to make a massive difference to the workload of the players.
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