The AFL staged an “opening round” for the second time last weekend. But the already truncated round zero, which was meant to feature four games held in Queensland and NSW, became even shorter when two games had to be postponed due to extreme weather.
It has sparked debate about whether the concept is a failure that should be scrapped – or if the league’s attempt to boost the code in the northern states is worthwhile.
Chief football writer and Real Footy podcast panellist Jake Niall was in Sydney for the weekend, and attended the two matches that went ahead.
“I think it was flat, the whole thing. When you’re walking around in Sydney, too, this wasn’t on anyone’s radar,” he said on the podcast.
“You didn’t see red and white, you didn’t see orange. You didn’t see Collingwood, you didn’t see Hawthorn. It wasn’t a sense that you get at Gather Round [in Adelaide] … I thought it was a fizzer, to be honest.”
He described the number of travelling fans as underwhelming.
“Both games it was noticeable – compared to last year – the away fans were down in numbers, both games.”
Fellow panellist Caroline Wilson took the view that opening round was a good thing.
“I don’t think we should throw the baby out with the bathwater,” Wilson said. “Just because a cyclone devastated northern NSW and Queensland, and flattened the AFL’s big opening round, I don’t think we should – I mean everyone’s now saying scrap it, it’s a disaster, we hate it – I don’t hate it, I think it’s a great idea.
“They’re trying to give football in NSW a kick-up.”
But she added: “Jake’s comments are interesting if he doesn’t think it really had an impact on the Sydney market”.
Though it wasn’t clear how much of a factor the poor weather played in the lack of interest that Niall experienced, he argued that the season was starting too early anyway.
“I don’t think this is right. This is too early,” he said. “Mother Earth is telling us something.
“People are not fully prepared for football, including athlete’s bodies … the fact that they’re playing in 28 degrees and you’re playing in humidity and intense heat; had it been in Melbourne it would have been worse.”
It may be a money-maker for the league, but “there are things more important than money”.
Besides which, host Michael Gleeson pointed out, more than half the competition is excluded.
“If you’re going to have an opening round, open it with all the teams,” he said.
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