AFL CEO Gillon McLachlan has confirmed there is interest in a ‘footy carnival’ in which all nine games in a round would be played in a single state.
The Age reported on Tuesday the league tabled the idea at a CEOs’ meeting on Monday and that the windfall for clubs could be $1 million.
McLachlan said he had floated the idea, which would involve scrapping the pre-season competition and instead adding an additional home and away game.
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Speaking on SEN’s Whateley on Tuesday, McLachlan confirmed the idea had been raised and well-received.
“It came as an idea, we work with the clubs about how they want the season set up,” he said.
“This year, if you recall, we played some internal practice matches, low key stuff, and then one proper hit out in venues with all the systems going and they (clubs) just played it like a home and away game, they just belted into each other.
“We had the presidents and CEOs on the back of that just before the opening week and I said, ‘if you’re going to do it like that, why don’t you play it as a home and away game? And we’ll just have a very limited pre-season’.
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“The team have gone off and explored all of that and now we’ve got multiple states interested in doing that, it’s got to the point where three states say, ‘yeah, we’ll do it, we’d love to have all nine games in this market’.”
McLachlan said the league was “looking at” introducing such a round in 2023, but added there was “a lot of work to do”.
The outgoing AFL CEO added club members would not be adversely impacted by such a concept coming to fruition.
“The members in each state still get their 11 home games and it’s an additional one, and we can come together as an industry,” he said.
“Yesterday we got a tick to go and say, ‘yeah, we can start drilling’, we brief the clubs where we are at, a marketing sense, financial sense, a logistical sense, and now we’re working through that with the clubs. We’ll probably do that over the next two or three weeks, it’d be a big thing.
“I think, what they’ve been notionally talking about is somewhere around, we get the season out of the blocks well and strong, then maybe around Round five-ish, somewhere in the back half of April, school holidays nationally, people could set it up, go away with their families and work around that sort of weekend if that was their inclination.”
