West Coast will ask the AFL to hand it an extra home game as compensation for the extra travel created by Gather Round, reports The West Australian.
The WA clubs will argue the extra kilometres they’ll need to travel across the home and away season, adding to the extensive load they are forced to take on, mean it’s only fair to make eastern clubs head west an extra time.
Both the Eagles and Dockers will travel almost 60,000 kilometres this year, jetting across the country most weeks, while at the lower end Collingwood and Geelong will fly under 15,000 kilometres.
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Much of this is due to the impossible to avoid nature of where clubs are located, how the VFL turned into the AFL and the need to balance out home and away games for financial reasons.
It is also worth noting that non-Victorian teams, while having to travel more, get more true home games against sides coming from interstate – while Victorian clubs often have ‘home’ games where they do not gain any sort of advantage because their opponent didn’t need to travel either.
Research has shown that the advantage from a home game primarily comes from the influence of a crowd on umpiring decisions (which favour the home team) rather than travel.
Eagles crowds are famously partisan and create a strong ‘noise of affirmation’ which mean they have received a higher proportion of free kicks at home over their history (8455 for, 7290 against) compared to every other club.
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But Eagles football manager Gavin Bell told The West Australian: “With that commitment for Gather Round in Adelaide for the next three years, we will be seeking and asking for an additional home game in Perth.
“We want to bring an eastern states team over for another home game in front of our members and supporters. If we’re going to play an extra game in the year, it would be great to balance that off.
“Wherever Gather Round is held outside of WA, we don’t want to be disadvantaged given our travel requirements that already exist. If we can offset that with an extra game at Optus that would be ideal.
“Maybe instead of it being home and away games it should be the number of games travelled.”
He continued: “It’s time spent away. It’s time spent in hotels. It’s quite a significant commitment to be part of it all.
“Last year, Fremantle and ourselves travelled over 57,000km and some Victorian teams travelled less than 15,000km.
“Part of it is the nature of where we live in a national competition. We understand that. But if there’s an opportunity to balance that with an additional home game it would be fantastic.”
