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Whateley

AFL mid-season tournament debate | Across the Divide! (23.06.26)

23 Jun 2026

Transcription

Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.

What are the initial reactions to the mid-season AFL tournament proposal?

0.031 - 22.88

Can I just address some business with you? Yeah. I think as a collective, the front office audience today are laughing at the idea. Like, I've put it out there. Do you like the idea of in-season tournament, which is something that's been floated with AFL CEOs? It's laughter on the text line. People are saying, no, that's a bell and whistle. That's not required. What's been the reaction?

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23.481 - 48.077 Gerard Whateley

Mostly against. Yeah. But that's – so there's four – proposals for what the future looks like once tasmania comes in and i do think that's the least likely of the four but it's the sexiest one to talk about yeah there's going to be a fixture restructure and hopefully we get something that addresses the inherent inequities in it um so

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48.412 - 71.23 Gerard Whateley

The best model for an AFL Premiership season would be 20 games. It would be everyone plays each other once, which gives you 18. There'd be a gather round and a rivalry round to restage all the local derbies. And... That is the model that then includes the in-season tournament to give you the content that's required to fulfill the obligations.

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71.79 - 94.261 Gerard Whateley

But if you parked the in-season tournament, that would be the best structure, which is why... So I'm leaning toward option three, which then goes into a group stage where you play three more games against your like teams from there. And I hope we have the imagination for that. But yeah, we at one stage had... an in-season tournament, which was quite revered.

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94.321 - 112.995 Gerard Whateley

And we use the example this morning, Dermot Brereton was always introduced as five-time day, five-time night premierships because the night premierships carried some cachet. They were midweek games when I was growing up. But I don't think the current day grassroots supporter has much tolerance for the idea.

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