by Leonard Colquhoun
In Trevor Grant's Daniher In For The Long
Haul (Herald
Sun, Sat 30 July 05), the
That, from season to season, the 'luck of
the draw' affects clubs differently - seemingly favouring some and appearing to
disadvantage others - is something that annoys, even enrages, club
supporters. There are what are euphemistically called anomalies each
season, particularly unequal travel burdens and the uneven
distribution of teams played twice. This
in turn give rise to all kinds of conspiracy theories, usually involving
'Them' having it in for 'Us'.
It's been a problem since 1986, the
last season of the former VFL's twelve-club competition, when each team
played its eleven opponents twice, once 'Home' and once 'Away'. Perhaps
surprisingly, this logically rational arrangement had
only been operating for the 17 seasons since 1970; before that, in the 45
seasons 1925-69, the twelve clubs played mainly 18-round seasons, with 17
rounds in 1925, 19 in 1945-9 (to make up for shortened wartime seasons in 1942-3)
and in 1952 (with its unique extra 'National Day' round), and 20 rounds in
1968-9 (to step up to the new 22-round season). The arrangements prior to the
twelve-club competition, in the interests of not over-burdening readers, are
best left for some other time.
Since the 1987 national expansion from
14 through 15 to the present 16 clubs, the draw has been, some would
claim, hopelessly compromised. A variety of different factors, including TV
moguls' 'requests', re-matches each season between cross-town derbies and
among the Victorian Big Four, Melbourne clubs playing 'Home' games out-of-state,
and so on, put demands on the fixturing, in
addition to the basic maths of 22 not going neatly into 16.
In the words of 20th century Eminent
Person, V.I.Lenin: "What is to be done?" (Note:
he pinched them from a title of a mid-19th century novelist.)
First, let's dispose of a few simple
solutions - it's a given that complex
problems are rarely solved that way. Three stand out:
(i) back
to 12 clubs. OK, which clubs fall over?
Even the once-struggling Lions and Swans in the foreign code states
seem now set and the pairs of clubs in footy-mad SA and WA are secure, which
means four Victorian clubs, on this reasoning, have to disappear. Right
- any four clubs except mine, OK?
(ii) a
15-round season. Yeah, as if.
(iii) a
30-round season. Great for the believers in 'Too much footy is still
not enough', but a bit hard on the players and on people with some sort of life
outside football.
Interestingly, this is exactly what four-time
premiership coach David Parkin recommends: "The sooner we have a 30-game
season the better, even if we have to shorten the games or extend the
season" (Legends Try To Save The Game, Sunday Herald Sun, 31
July 05). But the general impression seems to be that few are
ready to agree with Parkin at the moment.
So, we're left with 16 into 22 won't go.
The answer is to lengthen the time-span,
to seek equity over several seasons - but not too
many, because that's also unfair. Actually, isn't this what the AFL
Commission usually claims is now the case? So
why the continued scepticism?
Because the time-span over several seasons now
in use is precisely what some critics call 'hopelessly compromised'.
Someone has to put a head above the
parapet, so here goes. Following a brief explanatory note, here are some
suggested draws with almost no special pleadings.
'Team No. 16 is the representative
of all the teams in the 16-club competition, and it plays the other 15 in
varying patterns over cycles of seasons; it is number 16 under no
particular criterion.
20-rounds over a 3-year cycle:
Team No. 16 plays its 15 opponents once, then re-matches against Teams 1-5 in
season one, 6-10 in season two and 11-15 in season three. Each
club plays its 15 opponents four times over three seasons.
Advantage:
equitable draw over the three-year cycle; predictable sets of opponents each
season over the cycle.
Disadvantage: no annual re-matches
of cross-town derbies or the Vic Big Four, which fails the criterion
of 'Give the punters what they want'.
25-rounds over a 3-year cycle:
Team No. 16 plays its 15 opponents once, then re-matches against Teams 1-10 in
season one, 11-15 and 1-5 in season two and 6-15 in season
three. Each club plays its 15 opponents five times over three
seasons. Crowd-drawing re-matches such as local derbies would occur two
seasons in three.
Advantages:
three extra rounds per season for the keen punters; derby and other popular re-matches
nearly every season. Predictable sets of opponents each season over the
cycle.
Disadvantages: three too many
rounds for some players; clubs out of finals contention (even 'mathematically')
have an even longer agony. (But, hey, it's a game, isn't it?
A form of entertainment?)
24-rounds over a 5-year cycle:
Team No. 16 plays its 15 opponents once, then re-matches against Teams 1-9 in
season one, 10-15 and 1-3 in season two, 4-12 in season three, 13-15
and 1-6 in season four and 7-15 in season five. Each club plays its 15
opponents eight times over five seasons. Crowd-drawing
re-matches would occur three seasons in five.
Advantages:
two extra rounds per season for the keen punters; derby and other popular re-matches more
seasons than not. Predictable sets of opponents each season over the
cycle.
Disadvantages: much the same as for
the 25-round season, plus rarer derby re-matches and the longer cycle
working against equity.
All three outlined above use the
divisibility of 15 by 3 and 5 as the basis for their cycles of seasons. Now for
the radical, prime number-based proposal:
23-rounds over a 2-year cycle:
Team No. 16 plays its 15 opponents once, and then re-matches against its derby /
traditional rival / blockbuster opponent (call it Team No. 15) for 16
rounds; it then re-matches against Teams 1-7 in season one and 8-14 in season
two for its 23-game season. Each club plays its 14 non-derby opponents three times
over two seasons, with crowd-pleasing derby / traditional rival /
blockbuster matches occurring twice every season. Admittedly, this is
a somewhat 'compromised' draw, with annual recognition of crowd-magnet derbies.
Advantages:
Short two-year cycle; crowd-drawing derby re-matches twice a season; only one
round longer than the current season. Predictable sets of opponents each
season over the short two-year cycle.
Disadvantages: even
fewer Victorian blockbusters played twice a season than at present. And the
mental one - 23 is a prime number: it can't be
halved, or quartered, or neatly divided into thirds or fifths, and that might be
a mental block for some, but, remember, the current 22 can only be
halved.
This 23-round / two-year cycle seems as fair
a compromise between two conflicting demands - one: have a 100% fair draw, and
two: give the football public more of the games they want as can
mathematically be arranged. Or are there some readers 'out there' who have other
solutions?
And now, a look
towards a not totally implausible future (see footnote 1).
Let's cheerfully and optimistically
presume that Australian Football survives the globalising pressures
emanating from well-moneyed foreign codes supported by Sydney-centric business
moguls, advertising schmucks, media tarts and politicians. Let's
assume that what its founders called the 'game of our own' makes even greater
inroads into
two-conference,
24-round, two season cycle: the 20 clubs are arranged into two conferences
on largely regional criteria, which gives local rivalries their
due: during a season, clubs play their conference opponents more often than
their other opponents.
In each conference, Team No. 10
plays its nine conference rivals once each for nine games, then a re-match
against a derby rival (obviously, but let's say it anyway) from its own
conference (call it Team No. 9) and then re-matches against Conference
Rivals 1-4 in year one of the cycle, and Conference Rivals
5-8 in year two: total games per season so far - 14. Then, each
year, Team No. 10 plays its ten non-conference opponents once each, for a
24-round H&A season.
But wait, some ask, nervously,
"Aren't we becoming a little too American here?"
Not with the distinctly Australian tweaking outlined below, we aren't.
The NFL Superbowl,
one of the world's great sporting spectacles (regardless of one's views on 'gridiron'),
has one big problem: the two Superbowl teams
must come from different conferences, and therefore in some seasons the
best two teams may not qualify. Here's an Aussie solution for our
putative two-conference, 20-club AFL.
Both of our AFL conferences (perhaps
they could be named after Thomas Wentworth Wills and Henry Harrison?) each
have their own traditional four-match McIntyre Final Fours to decide each
Conference Winner - the Americans would call them Conference 'Champions',
but that's not our usage of the word 'Champion' (and the VFL/AFL has not yet had
a 'Premiers and Champions', although Collingwood in 1929 and Essendon in 2000
came close with just one loss). In these two conference finals series, the
term 'Grand Final' would not be used for the two title-deciding matches -
perhaps simply 'Wills, or Harrison, Conference Final'.
In the American NFL, the two Conference 'Champions'
play off in the Superbowl, and that's where their
problem lies.
But, unlike our cobbers
across the Pacific, we would have a further four-match McIntyre final series to
decide the AFL Premiership among an "AFL
Final Four". This would comprise the two Conference Winners in positions 1
and 2 (it is immaterial who's called what), and the two Conference Runners-up in
3 and 4, and things would proceed in the traditional Australian way: 1 vs. 2 for
a place in the AFL Grand Final, and 3 vs. 4 for a place in the AFL Preliminary
Final. And so on to the AFL Grand Final, as in the 1931-1971 VFL finals series.
So, such an AFL Grand Final may
be played:
between both Conference Winners,
one through winning the AFL 1 vs. 2 semi-final, the other through winning the
AFL Preliminary Final after losing the AFL 1 vs. 2 semi-final; or
between one Conference Winner,
through winning its AFL 1 vs. 2 semi-final, and one Conference
Runner-up which, after winning its AFL 3 vs. 4 semi-final, goes on to
win the AFL Preliminary Final over the other Conference Winner, thus qualifying
for the AFL Grand Final. The scenario could mean that the two AFL Grand Final
contestants come from the same conference, or from different conferences,
thus addressing the problem in the US NFL Superbowl
with typical Aussie ingenuity. (If the words above fail, draw some
diagrams, and it'll make sense.)
Who knows how much of this will eventuate? Who, in the mid-80s, when crowds began falling (from season 1981's 3.354 million to 1985's 2.727 million, according to the AFL 2005 Season Guide - a loss of well over half a million), would have dared to predict a Brisbane premiership three-peat, an 'Aussie Rules' attendance of over 70,000 at Sydney's Homebush - twice, Australian Football drawing bigger crowds than rugby league in Brisbane, the Swans frequently having the biggest 'football' attendance on any given weekend in Sydney? Or that a NSW Premier would be a past player of St George Australian Football Club in the Sydney Football League, as reported in Jane Fraser's Strewth column, The Australian, Mon 1 Aug 05?
Where now?
or
1. A
version of this futuristic fantasising first appeared in Kevin Taylor's Footystats.
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