What the AFL should have been

DESPITE employing equalisation measures borrowed from sporting competitions the world over, the AFL has never been able to make the competition truly equal.

And, despite eschewing the big changes that would allow all clubs to compete on an equal footing (or as close to it as one can get), the league has also failed to adequately protect the heritage of the sport outside of Victoria.

Some might argue that means the league has got it right: it has driven a middle ground between heritage and equity, and those who wanted it more one way than the other are all disappointed.

But I like to think the peak competition for the country’s most popular sport could have done it so much better if football’s administrators had given more thought to the process in the early days of the national expansion.

Or had made a lot more tough decisions during the past decade.

Let’s start with the early days.

In the late 1970s and early 1980s, the now-defunct NFL ran national competitions featuring the best-performing clubs from the VFL, WAFL and SANFL in the previous season.

It was Australian football’s equivalent of soccer’s Champions League and variously branded as the Wills Cup, Ardath Cup, Escort Cup, Sterling Cup and Foster’s Cup.

That competition could well have continued and expanded (without the tobacco sponsorship), even if that had been done under the auspices of the dominant VFL.

Rather than admitting new clubs from Western Australia (the Eagles and Dockers) and Adelaide (the Crows), the NFL could have merged the three major state competitions and had a bigger national league with a promotion-relegation system.

Yes, some clubs (from all three states) would have gone under or merged because of the extra costs of competing in a national competition, but the league would have been an organic one, grown from the state leagues that served the sport so well for more than 100 years.

Those clubs could have maintained their tribal roots, having first access to players from the zones they managed (which would have been expanded when nearby clubs failed).

Teams from Queensland, NSW and Tasmania could have followed, though they would likely have been representative, rather than club based.

The heritage and fabric of the game, nationally rather than just in Victoria, would have been better served.

Such a process would also have allowed for some of the historical equity issues with the current competition to be ironed out.

A cap on the number of teams in the top-tier league would create parity in fixturing, with each team playing each other both at home and away every season.

Meanwhile, states other than Victoria would at least have a claim on hosting the grand final, with three merged leagues not having to simply acquiesce to the Victorians and allow the showcase match to be held at the MCG every year (COVID years aside).

These last couple of reforms could also have been achieved if the league had made some (very) hard decisions over the past decade by forcing Victorian clubs to merge or fold and by refusing to sign a long-term deal for the grand final to be held at the MCG.

Yes, that would have caused some serious pain in the short term, both financially and from Victorian traditionalists (the traditionalists from WA and SA have already seen their competitions and clubs gutted).

But it would also have cured two of the biggest inequities in the competition as it stands, as well as a third: it would force the Victorian clubs to travel more often.

Whether it’s realistic to expect a sporting body headquartered in Victoria to wield the axe against the Victorian clubs, let alone cop the financial fallout of such a move, is another question.

But it need not have been if administrators had got it right in the 1980s.

For that, we can probably blame those in WA who created the Eagles instead of demanding the creation of a new or merged national competition.

After all, the South Australians held firm for another four years before caving in and forming the Crows.