Collingwood chief Craig Kelly has slammed the AFL fixture, saying it is ”wrong”, “broken” and the league needs to start again.
Speaking to Triple M on Friday, Kelly was quizzed on the fixture, which has been savaged this year by coaches, commentators and fans alike due to various inequities such as byes, short breaks, and Opening Round.
And his response could not have been more emphatic.
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“The fixture is flawed, the fixture is wrong, and it’s the most unequal part of our game now where everything else is equalised,” Kelly said on Triple M.
“We’ve got to blow it up. We’ve got to start again, and we’ve got to have an open mind to thinking, ‘how do we get an even situation where we’re playing each other the right amount of times?’.”
It is certainly an eyebrow-raising take from the Magpie heavy-hitter, with many believing Collingwood (as a powerhouse of the competition) is one of the major beneficiaries of the fixture.
But Kelly scoffed at claims his club was looked after by the AFL when it came to the week-to-week grind of the home and away season.
“We don’t get the benefits,” Kelly said.
“Our first few weeks (we got) St Kilda at home, fantastic. Was great for St Kilda (it was a St Kilda home game at the MCG), and we love that,” he said.
“But then we’re always playing Thursday night at the Gabba (against a strong Brisbane team) and then we’re also coming back and Anzac Day (the clash between Collingwood and Essendon) we start to squeeze it. It does every time, because of when we play it (it is on a Saturday this year but can be mid-week).
“So what happens is the first part of the year for us is really difficult because of our choices, as much as the AFL’s. And we’re not saying we’re whinging about it, but it is sometimes driving the economy.
“We’re part of that conversation because our fans – and our fans are outstanding – they turn up and they travel, and Brisbane want us to go Thursday night because it fills the hotel rooms.”
While Kelly said he understood his club was in-demand because of its crowd-pulling capability, alternatives need to be looked at.
“Do we keep an Anzac Day clash. How does that look? Carlton v Collingwood, you know, they’re big games … and the other side of it, which everyone needs (to understand), is that we need to fill the stadiums,” he said.
“So we need to have stadiums that have got the most amount of people, because that’s the revenue model, the entertainment model,” he said.
Kelly also floated a radical proposal of “a new asset” in the middle of the season where teams played multiple times for some sort of trophy.
“We play each other once and we say, right, what does that look like?” he said.
“Then do we actually have the opportunity to start a new asset that sits in the middle of the season where we condense two weeks of footy into sort of the opportunity for us to try some VFL players … for us to be able to bring some guys in who are not necessarily playing every week, because we might say, ‘Hey, we’ve had a good start of the season, let’s rest some of the older guys and let’s see what these young guys do.’ Similar to what we did in COVID.
“We might pay multiple times during the week. So we’ve got almost a mini cup in the middle of the year that has a consequence and an outcome that’s good for the comp.”
He said that mini cup coiuld be for premiership points or it could be for some finals wildcard ticket.
“Then we go into the back part of the year (with a) different finals system,” he said.
Asked what that would mean for broadcasters, Kelly said maybe it was time to take a step back to move forward.
“If we’re smart about the (proposed) middle asset, it becomes an asset that’s valuable for the TV viewers, because it’s new and it takes some time to build,” he said.
“Maybe the industry needs to take it be able to prepare to say, ‘Hey, we’re going to take a bit of a haircut. Come back two steps to take four steps forward,’ because we haven’t had that.
“From 90s onwards the industry’s gone up and at about 10 to 15 per cent increase every year. COVID hits and it hits us in the head … but we’ve bounced back hard.
“Now what has to happen is, how do we keep revenue? We can’t keep asking the media partners to be the only major form of revenue in the industry.
“At some point in time, the competition (will) get to a point where not every year (revenue will) keep increasing. It just won’t. We’re not a big enough market. We’re not like the States. Everyone keeps (pointing) to the States. Forget about that. This is different.”
