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Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Tuesday morning. This is your town. This is your station. This is Waitley. Good morning. Let's run the exercise this morning and try not to start with no. The AFL season will change in 2026 with the introduction of the 19th team. 2028 with the introduction of the 19th team. Rather than fear that change, let's embrace it and let's help shape it.
Let's use a bit of imagination rather than the natural flinch to conservatism. I would say across our nine years together, I've had a minimum 500 blueprints emailed in for revised fixtures and structures to the season, the most recent of which came last night from Andrew. We're trying to be Ken McIntyre here and choose the best system for the future of the AFL.
Four concepts were open for debate yesterday at the CEO's conference, and they're being relayed to you, the football public. Option one is the least inspiring.
Chapter 2: What changes will the AFL season undergo in 2026?
22 games across 24 weeks with four double ups. The competition would be fine, but it would be an opportunity lost. Remember the heritage of the 22-game season? 12 teams would play all opposition home and away. It was perfect. It was the perfect balance for a suburban competition. Now 22 games makes zero sense for a 19-team national comp.
Option two puts some thought into equity in a fundamentally unequitable fixture. 24 regular season games across 28 weeks with a five-week final series. Six double-up games with a mechanism to determine who those opponents are rather than handpicking. So put a formula in place the way the NFL does, for instance, where each position has a specific draw attached to it.
There are two neutral games, one being Gather Round and another as yet undetermined and a slight shortening of the game window to accommodate the additional games. So the three hour broadcast window as it currently is would be two and a half hours. It would be a nip and tuck to the timing of the games.
Option two is superior to option one as it actually attempts to address some of the inherent fixes in the fixture. Option three is where it gets really interesting. Play all teams once, plus rivalry round and gather round, which gives you the first 20. And then it's off to a group stage. The top 16 are drawn into four groups and play three more games.
Now, either this is evenly split or the top eight are already qualified for finals and jockey for position in their two groups, while the next eight jockey for the two remaining wildcard tickets. Then we hit the eight-week final series. The bottom three play among themselves. There's an elegance to this, a three-week runoff to the five-week final series.
The risk would be repetition, but the best against the best for more games works. And option four is for the radicals. We play the perfectly structured Premiership season for the modern era. 18 rivals once, then gather round and rivalry rounds, and onto a five-week final series. This, for me, is nirvana. That's as good a fixture as we can get for the future of the AFL season.
That's my clear preference. But to get that... The footprint of the season has to be retained, and that requires the idea of an in-season tournament. A three-week carve-out, 19 AFL teams plus the best of a state league team. So there's a bit of know-your-history at play here.
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Chapter 3: What are the four proposed fixture options for the AFL?
This sort of thing has happened before. Imagine the showcasing of the state league players and the market that that would create. Each team plays three games. The winner of each pool goes into a semifinal and then on to a grand final. So the winner and the runner-up play five games. Can a tournament create its own cultural footprint and be a sought-after prize? We used to be able to do this.
Could it be reinvented for the future? I suspect most won't have the imagination for it, but the first part is a much better premiership season than any of the other models. So those are our four. The first canvassing of opinions suggested that option two or option three will be our future. I have a leaning toward three, but I'd love it if we had the collective imagination for four.
So try not to resist and just go for no as a starting point. See if we can find the opportunity and the excitement. Look to the excitement of what it could be as we drive the discussion forward. It's a moment where we get to choose the competition of the future. And between us all, we need to choose wisely.