Chapter 1: What led to the conclusion that Opening Round was a failure?
Waitley on SEN. It's not going to be called opening round. Everyone admits that that was a failure. Opening round is dead. It's dead.
Forever?
Forever.
The agenda setters last night. The demise of opening round will be mourned by no one in the southern states. It progressively proved a failed experiment over its three years of operation. You identified it quickly and told the league in no uncertain terms.
What started as a well-meaning idea to compete with the NRL in New South Wales and Queensland played out as a disjointed and flat start to a season.
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Chapter 2: How did the Opening Round experiment affect the league's fan engagement?
You need to launch big, not in dribs and drabs. The cost of northern exposure was the exclusion of the heartland in Victoria, South Australia and WA, where the majority of people watched the games. Instead of unifying the constituency, it caused fracture and resentment. The resultant early season buys proved as irritating as they were disruptive.
Having your team go missing for 16 or 17 or 18 days once the season started would pass muster at no marketing agency in the world. It is self-evident that to get the pop at the launch of the new adventure, you need 18 fan bases engaged in nine matches. And the bigger, the better. It facilitates excitement and critically the re-establishment of rituals.
and it was a formula that had served the game well. There is no coincidence that round six just brought the biggest crowds of the season. Finally, nine games in the right configuration, but it took until mid-April. Next season is a one-off. The 150th celebration test match will have clear air from the AFL, which is hugely significant for its stature and prospects.
It didn't feel guaranteed that cricket would be granted March 11 to 15 without competition. And I applaud all involved that this appears now to be the case. Despite the era of staging this historic event as a pink ball test, it will drip with nostalgia and hopefully prove as cherished as the centenary test, which is still so fondly recounted almost 50 years on.
And then the AFL needs to get moving with the biggest opening possible. A stacked round one full of blockbusters, a loaded Easter schedule, and then an early gather round in Adelaide to coincide with the school holidays with a better set of games, frankly, than was what just served up.
If you draw it up with a bit of imagination and put the right games into the northern markets, the true blockbusters in Brisbane and on the Gold Coast and in New South Wales, it could be the biggest 27-game bonanza we've ever seen. Truly vaulting into a new season, and that serves the game best ever. everywhere, not just in the northern markets.
The demise of opening round will be mourned by no one in the southern states. The open line is 1300 736 736, and the 40 Wings temper text is 0433 98 1116.
The difference is temper. 2027 is a one-off. In 2028, the AFL should utilise that long weekend in South Australia and Victoria.
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Chapter 3: What factors contributed to the exclusion of traditional fan bases?
What's the Labor Day weekend? And have an opening round that runs from Wednesday through to the Monday and utilise all the key games in all the key areas. But the end of opening round sees the fail experiment soon to be put on the shelf.