AFL 2024 Why a wildcard round is a bad idea for the AFL
The fixture is already heavily compromised and – in another strange contradiction of the purported “level playing field” the AFL desires – handicapped by giving top teams from the previous year a harder run. Even then, the AFL stumbles – Carlton, mysteriously, ended up playing North Melbourne and the Tigers twice this year despite finishing third last year.
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The club bosses were neither drinking the cool aid on wildcards, nor vehemently opposed, according to one CEO, who noted that “it was the AFL that pushing it, not us.”
But if clubs and fans do not push back, the risk is that the de facto version of a “final 10” will be dumped on the competition, which will veer further in the direction of becoming a major events business rather than a genuine competition.
In the old VFL days, only one third of the 12 clubs played finals. This was – rightly – expanded to five out of 12, then six out of 14 as the VFL went national, and – after one season (1994) in which a majority made the top eight – the final eight became ensconced.
Having messed around with different variations of the first and second weeks of finals – 1 v 8, 2 v 7, 3 v 6 and 4 v 5, with higher ranked losers then playing lower ranked losers and so forth – the AFL settled on two final fours, enshrining the idea that the top four should have a second chance, and the teams from five to eight do not.
It’s worth noting that in America’s NFL – the leviathan competition that has provided the genesis for so much of the AFL system (draft, salary cap, revenue sharing) – only 14 of 32 teams make the play-offs, including the “wildcard” teams; in Major League Baseball, just 12 out of 30 teams play in the post-season.
It is only the NBA that lets the majority of its 30 teams compete in some form of play-offs, permitting 12 to make it (six per East and Western Conference) plus four more who play a version of wildcards (called the “play-in tournament”).
The AFL should bear in mind that the NFL’s domination of broadcast ratings is predicated on the shorter season they play (17 games per team plus playoffs), compared with baseball and basketball, which have devalued the currency of regular-season games via excessive matches.
The AFL will soon have a 19th team, the Tassie Devils. Their arrival will make the top eight slightly harder to reach. But the AFL ought to stick to the premise that making finals is a significant achievement in a tight competition. If the league is hellbent on expanding the finals, a final nine – with the minor premier earning a week off – is more sensible than the cash grab of two wildcards. But, really, eight is more than enough.
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Only two teams have won premierships from outside the top four since the final eight was introduced, the Adelaide Crows in 1998 (with a flawed finals model that allowed them a second chance from fifth) and the storied Beveridge’s Bulldogs of 2016, who stormed from seventh to snatch the most improbable flag in decades.
It’s true that the gap between the top few and 10th or 11th has narrowed significantly, as we’ve seen in the precipitous descents of Carlton and Essendon lately and Hawthorn’s surge from 0-5 to inside the eight.
Equally, one can argue that this new equality has rendered the wildcard and finals expansion even more unwarranted. For the AFL already has a version of wildcard weekends – it’s called rounds 23 and 24.
