Pre-season six-ring circus

With two additional teams to roster in, the pre-season competition was always going to be in for a significant shake-up. But we’re not sure that the round-robin format for round one doesn’t provide more disadvantage than advantage. And we don’t have a better alternative to put forward as we write.

 

The roster for round one looks like a three-ring circus, but the real sting in the tail comes for the team that gets a ‘rest’.

 

Teams with a break are going to have a hard time keeping their guys active after forty minutes of footy, but without tiring them too much. Entering the third ‘game’ with a list that has cooled down and then has to warm up again is going to be a huge challenge. Are there 28 exercise bikes available at each venue to keep the legs moving?

 

Teams starting in the second ‘game’ will start ‘cold’ against a fully energised and warmed up squad, as will the ‘break’ team after its break.

 

Clearly, the team playing the first two ‘games’ has a substantial head start over their pool rivals, and the ‘break’ team looks set to run a significant soft-tissue injury risk (Again, we haven’t begun to consider alternatives — and it doesn’t matter because this is what’s going to happen!).

 

What’s immediately striking about the announcement is that, at the date of the press release, Operations chief, Adrian Anderson, is still consulting with club fitness departments on solutions to the dilemma.

 

How long have the AFL known about this arrangement? Did someone doodle it on the back of an envelope last week, or have they been working on the pre-season fixture for eight or ten months? Smart money would punt on the latter, yet continuing consultation suggests it’s a relatively recent ‘solution’.

 

It was only two extra teams, yet the ramifications are only starting to be felt.