St Kilda great Nick Riewoldt has slammed some of the “garbage” fixture ideas that were floated on Monday as the AFL executive met with the club CEOs on the Gold Coast.
The structure of the fixture will change drastically in 2028 when Tasmania enter the competition as the 19th team.
WATCH THE VIDEO ABOVE: Agenda Setters panel debate radical AFL fixture ideas
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With an odd number of teams, there will need to be a bye for at least one team each week, while the total number of rounds will also need to be changed from 25 at the moment.
Among the options presented to club bosses on Monday were reducing the season to 20 games and having a separate three-week tournament potentially featuring a 20th team of state league stars.
Another option was having every team play 20 games, and then splitting the competition into four groups where they will play each other to decide the top 10.
There was also the option of having a 24-game season, which would feature six double-ups and two neutral rounds (including Gather Round).
“There’s some wacky suggestions being put forward for when Tasmania comes in,” Tom Morris said on The Agenda Setters.
Riewoldt liked the idea of a 20-game season, but slammed the tournament idea as “garbage”.
“A 20-game season makes sense to me. An in-play tournament, garbage,” he said.
“A team of state league stars. I mean, who’s going to support that?”
The fixture at the moment is a hotly debated topic with who you get to play twice and the timing of those matches often the most contentious.
Hawthorn coach Sam Mitchell was happy to stay out of the debate surrounding the future, but did say that playing everyone once before double-ups made the most “sense”.
He also noted the potential financial loss of reducing the total number of games in a season.
“Playing everyone once and then having something after that makes a lot of sense to me for the fairness,” Mitchell said on The Agenda Setters.
“But I think every person at this panel gets paid because of the revenue that comes into the game and that’s because of the people that watch it on TV and if you make the season shorter it makes every one of us take a pay cut.”
