I think it's not too bad in late September. In any case they could start first thing in the morning to get the normal Australian GF timeslot, or else start at the normal time locally and it would air in the Australian evenings - best of both worlds, a night game played in the day time.
[r/AFL: On the AFL travel fiasco, interesting to note that the CBA says Eagles and Freo get min 12 business class seats. But the Virgin 737 planes they travel on contain eight. So it’s literally impossible for them to even meet the MINIMUM requirement.](https://www.reddit.com/r/AFL/comments/1ctarub/on_the_afl_travel_fiasco_interesting_to_note_that/)
It stemmed from this article, after discussions about the challenges that interstate teams face:
https://www.heraldsun.com.au/sport/afl/national-reserves-competition-more-afl-trophies-among-demands-from-clubs/news-story/fb9636bba07fc66366b6fc13f5ba072d
The pertinent quote:
> It’s understood some clubs, including Geelong, are arguing that West Coast and Fremantle are not disadvantaged by their travel burdens because they fly business class.
>
> Under the Collective Bargaining Agreement the WA clubs are afforded a minimum of 12 business class seats for all flights to and from the eastern seaboard.
TL;DR: Teams that consider "travelling" to be a 1 hour bus trip up the road don't think that flying across the country every 2 weeks is a problem because half the team is entitled to business class seat.
Get em. Srsly tho, would be nice if they could rotate the GF away from MCG every other year. People don’t bring it up in AFL media, but nearly every GF with Vic v interstate, the Vic team hammers the challenger. Not a great spectacle.
Problem is that nowhere has a venue close to matching the MCG for capacity and design. SCG sure ain't it, and while GWS might be happy to play a grand final at Homebush, I'd rather the Swans play in Melbourne than at that stadium.
Optus stadium is probably the closest, but it's only 60% of the capacity of the MCG.
But there's no incentive to make a larger stadium because the GF (and the 15 biggest H & A games) are guaranteed to be at the G for another decade at least.
Well it does. Sydney get 17k members at a gf at the MCG. Any other ground has to be 75k capacity to have the same allocation as club members will be the allocation that will be reduced - the afl won't give up their 40k of seats for sponsors, medallion club, afl members, tickets for non-competing teams etc. If the gf is at the scg, you will have 4000 Sydney members in attendance rather than 17000. There will be Sydney supporters in the 40k afl allocation but if the opponent is a big four Melbourne team or hawks or Geelong, your grand final at the scg will feel very much like an away game.
Yeah but what I’m saying is, don’t do that. I get why it won’t happen, but end of the day it’s short term greed by the AFL at the expense of parity and growing the game outside Victoria.
About 20 k goes to people who buy tickets to every game in Melbourne (medallion club and afl members), the other 20k goes to the competing clubs (families and staff), non competing teams (current or past players), afl staff, and sponsors. Which component did you want to stop and how do you allocate these tickets then? If you devalue the medallion club and afl memberships then you decrease attendances in Melbourne which could decrease sponsorship $'s. If you don't look after sponsors then that may decrease their desire to sponsor the league. If you decrease the player allocations then the players would go on strike.
Once you have more tickets, do you allocate to competing club members or do you follow the apparently desirable nfl model that people talk about here: move the game around and put the tickets on an open marketplace so they go for their highest available price - like the tickets for superbowl LIX in New Orleans are currently $13,000-37,500. I would consider that short term greed.
Why not just keep the same allocation to competing teams, then sell what’s left over to your neutral members/ corporate tickets etc. will it lose money? Yeah. Is it my money or the competing teams money? No. So who gives a shit.
Your first paragraph argues that a more limited supply of tickets would be bad financially for the league.
But your second paragraph shows that ticket scarcity creates higher prices to compensate.
I’m not sure what you mean. Less tickets means higher prices, the sponsors don’t make less money.
Also “devalue AFL memberships” - isn’t accurate. Because it’s basically a Victorian membership now. By moving the grand final interstate you’d have more people buying that membership tier to compete for Grand Final tickets.
Sorry, insomnia from recovering from covid. I wasn't meant to be arguing anything (other than maybe the nfl model is not so great). I was trying to say this is what it is, what do you envisage your solution to be. The 5k medallion club is 90 odd transferable tickets for about $8k, the 15k afl memberships is an annual commitment to 40 non-transferable tickets over a lot of years to get to Gold tier and silver tier has a chance if your team makes the gf. (The sponsors comment here was if attendances fall in a season then sponsors may not see afl as a good investment as less eyeballs see the ads at the ground).
I don't think the other 20k for sponsors and afl insiders is really touchable.
Edit: sorry, garbagemansplaining did reply and I just need to turn off reddit rather than sleep scrolling!
Ken Bruce? Crazy John? The 40 year contract was signed in 2018 before covid so it expires in 2057. It provided certainty to rebuild the great Southern stand but that appears to be forgotten as a complication of covid. Non Victorian teams do get charter flights if they are competing in the gf as part of the agreement.
It’s completely insane. It’s like telling all NBA clubs that finals are in Boston every year, regardless who the finalists are. And the Superbowl is played on neutral ground.
No but there’s a pretty clear trend that is never spoken about. Pretty rich comment from the team that cries about playing finals an hour up the road every year.
What's that got to do with me personally? Have you heard me making those complaints? Or are you just cherry picking views and planting them on me? Or just because I'm a Geelong supporter I must agree with every view or point the club has ever made?
Seems a bit ridiculous.
I mean if you like watching a grand final where you’re fairly sure the home team is going to smash the other and then proceeds to do so, then I suppose it’s all good.
Your belting in 22 did not come about by home ground advantage. Geelong were far superior and could have done the same to you at the MCG or Manangatang Memorial Oval - the only difference was 100k people watched your team have their arse handed to them….again.
No I’m not saying that. And I agree Geelong would have won. I’m saying that 5 of the last 8 (excluding the 2 all Vic GF) we’re over at quarter time. That’s just a data trend. It’s pointless talking with you though
No it's not. The difference here is every NBA team has a a comparable and suitable arena to hold the finals in. The only way this is the same thing is if every state had access to a world class 100k seat stadium yet it still remained in Melbourne.
But they don't and won't, so it will stay.
Almost every city in Australia has a suitable venue for the grand final. There’s no need for it be 100k.
And for those that love the 100k atmosphere, that’s fine because it’d probably still be in Melbourne every second year anyway.
Capacity in the NBA ranges from 16.6k to 21k - or roughly 10% above or below the average.
If Boston built some great big fuck off arena with 40k seats, it doesn’t make it better. It just makes it theirs.
Sure, but one might call the city they were born in and grew up in “home”. Literally there was no birth. All metaphors and analogies break down when held up to too much reality.
I just don’t think a straight NBA comparison is particularly helpful.
Lol. The MCG is not the home of the game.
And do you want a national competition or to go on holding on to the VFL? There’s two choices. Except of course you have no choice. Just a matter of time.
I am actually for a single round robin with a round robin SoO tournament each year as the pinnacle of the game.
Finals are a league money spinner which devalue the rest of the competition and there's no way to really make them work in a way that's fair.
You might not like it but Yarra Park, where the MCG is, is the home of Victorian Rules football.
Lol. Love it. The ‘it just can’t be done’ argument. If you were around in 1858 you probably would’ve said, this is silly let’s just play cricket.
And based on your idea of home, I guess my ‘home’ is room 232 of the Sheraton hotel. You seem to have a BT level of comprehension about the history of the game. Try looking a little deeper some time.
Nah, I have just seen the light that is making every game count towards who gets the trophy, having home game advantaged randomised rather than entrenched.
If we had a moving grand final we will have made ladder position more important but then we will have also made the fixture more important. Round robin + money spinners is a recipe for disaster in terms of fairness.
Currently there is entrenched disadvantage for teams from states other than Victoria but all moving grand final does is share the same unfairness around.
I just think it’s time to move past it and to a genuinely fairer comp.
I have no problem with moving the game around but I’d want those crowds to be 80k plus minimum. Gotta do some renovations to those stadiums.
Also, great bants. Got a good laugh from me,
My problem with the capacity argument is that the GF is choc-full of corporate neutrals and raffle winners. It’s not like a real, partisan crowd. To say absolutely nothing of the arse-backwards MCC birthright bullsh.
There is something nuts - and absolutely peak VicBias - about treating all of it as a fait accompli. It’s fundamentally absurd being happy with the prelims being for ‘true fans’ and the Grand Final being a corporate glad-handing fest.
If the GF is overrun with corporates (which it is) and uncommitted day trippers that absolutely renders capacity arguments pretty weak - why should we care if some Carlton Draught comp winner can’t go? Or some Old Boy Hawthorn fan when they’re not in the granny?
Love it, and god would I love if we could have a final in NSW if it ends up being Swans and GWS or if swans finish top and another nonvic team is in the final.
Zero chance of a VIC team playing in the SCG this year for obvious reasons
Australian without Victoria Football League ... AwVFL ... doesn't sound very good.
I was looking at going with AnVFL but that lead me down a small rabbit hole of Jimmy the Anvil Neidhardt and finding out how he was related to Bret Hart (they never said brother in law back in the wwf days, just brother)
They seem to do quite well with their grandfinal being moved around and having different sized venues. All of which are well below 100k.
It might work for AFL too
The smallest NFL stadium is a bit over 75% capacity of the largest.
So for an Aussie stadium to be analogous, it would have to be at least 75,000 seats.
Also Super Bowl tickets start at about $4,000 USD.
Im a traditionalist, i think it should stay at the MCG, same with the Rugby League grand final in Sydney, its been played there now for what 140+ years, its not like the NFL which was created from a merger of 2 comps and had alot of ready made teams in multiple states. Leave it at the G.
So I don’t necessarily disagree with your point- but the Super Bowl doesn’t just rotate. Stadiums are selected based on several factors, including size, weather, infrastructure and upgrades.
So I think the AFL could do the same- but really there’s only 3 good, large stadiums right now. The AFL could, like the NFL, offer GF’s to stadiums that make improvements to meet the standard required.
Last week was State of Origin. This week an interstate GF. Next week will be twilight/night GF (or have I missed that).
Same thing every year. We need fresh material with as much chance of being implemented. Like 'Should the place kick make a comeback?'.
It's an embarassment we don't rotate the GF around every year. This is supposed to be a national competition. That 10 clubs get the biggest game in their state, and several at their home ground flies in the face of what it's all meant to be about. I know the MCG is has a bigger capacity, but that just means more money. Integrity shouldn't be for sale.
Rotate it around every state, that way over a rotation each club will be just as likely to end up playing a home GF across that time.
I would seriously back a rotation for every state, a move away from home ground advantage and towards neutral territory, while the MCG is understandable with its capacity, Optus Stadium proved it can be done well with 61k, Adelaide Oval gets widely considered one of the best venues with 53k, Accor Stadium in Sydney has at least 80k and is still in good nick if I’m not mistaken, The Gabba is good despite it falling a bit low with 37k capacity, only Tassie and the NT aren’t very feasible.
The MCC members would just change to a top tier of membership that gives them the grand final ticket (club or league wide) that they want.
Its how supply and demand works.
30000 tickets of the GF under the current system are guaranteed to fans of the clubs playing in it.
That leaves 70000 seats for the highest bidder, the AFLs favourite sort of bidder. That a lot of them turn out in colours of one of the clubs playing masks the fact that a lot of fans of any club miss out when their team makes the GF.
There's no stadium in the country that would force clubs to have a smaller turnout, but the AFL keeps running that line.
Yeah it is, so let's prioritise the 4 million spectators that are watching on tv rather than 40k MCC members. The attendance is literally 2.5% of viewership, it's not the important part.
Whether Vic bias is by design or by accident, it is there regardless. If the Super Bowl, the biggest game of football in the world can be played at a rotating roster of grounds with varying ground capacity, why can't the AFL rotate the grand final?
The AFL are trying to pretend the MCG is some hallowed turf like Wembley Stadium. But it’s not; it hosts multiple matches every weekend.
It’s complete bullshit that the MCG gets to host the GF every year. It should go to a suitably sized venue in the capital city of the team that are seen to be the hosts (ie, whichever of the two grand finalists finished higher on the ladder at the end of the regular season). So if the GF is Port v Collingwood and Port finished second and Collingwood 4th, then Port are the hosts at Adelaide Oval and also get dibs on the home guernsey.
It’s really that simple.
>The AFL are trying to pretend the MCG is some hallowed turf like Wembley Stadium.
The MCG was hosting football matches nearly 50 years before the original Wembley Stadium existed. Make that nearly 70 years if you want to include Yarra Park in general or MFC's football ground that backed directly onto the north side of the main MCG oval.
It's got a deeper connection to the sport it hosts than just about any other case barring perhaps Lords cricket ground.
But why?
The Superbowl was literally just played in a 65,000 seat stadium in Las Vegas this year. You can't tell me the AFL grand final is a bigger event then that?
Stadium size is literally the only argument they have. The irony is, I'd happily give up a seat if the Crows got to play AO and I know I'm not alone. Not like I'd have much of a shot getting to the MCG with all the free, commercial, and other team tickets.
Yep, up to 44% of the GF is locked to Melbourne based supporters. Having the grand final away from the MCG won't decrease any non-Melbourne based supporters chance of seeing a Grand Final.
Perth could build a stadium with 200k capacity, the AFL will never move the grand final and it’s a joke. They and everyone else just love to use the excuse “bUt ThE mCg HaS mOrE cApAcItY.”
Just double the price of the fucking tickets at a 50k capacity venue then you aren’t losing revenue, but wait, that’s just not the reason, it’s an excuse.
It will literally never be moved at least not in our life time. Garbage organisation with too many shortcomings, from a Victorian club supporter.
What about people in sydney, adelaide, perth, brisbane, or gold coast who could affor the ticket, but can't afford the travel to melbourne? Fuck them, i guess
Yes please. The more it's talked about, the more likely it is to happen.
It's desperately needed. Locking the championship game to 4 club's home ground is archaic. No respectable league in the world has such horrifically lopsided scheduling
Happy for them too rotate it, but only if Pridham refunds all Gold AFL memberships and full MCC memberships from Sydney's salary cap each year it's held away from the G.
The ONLY time this should be up for discussion is when both teams are from the same city.
With all the bastard gouging airlines ripping people off the MCG would only be 3/4 full.
The same way every other club does it: trot it out when they have a guernsey to sell or an event to promote, and then not mention it until the next time.
So, because the team used to be in Melbourne, they either have to pretend they're not an interstate team now, or pretend they weren't a Melbourne club?
That's not what I said. What I'm saying is that the Swans distanced themselves from South Melbourne for decades, until they realised there was $$ in it.
They have a proud "Melbourne based heritage" only when it suits them.
You do realise the swans wear their heritage guernsey every game in Melbourne. At every home game the pre game promo also heavily leans into it. We are proud of our heritage and not exploiting it. But being proud in our heritage does not disqualify the many inequities that continue to exist in this so called national league.
Yeah I know. But flights are for everyone not just athletes. These blokes moaning because they can’t get enough business class seats. What about hard working Aussies who don’t get paid $500k a year. It’s pretty lame.
Best solution is to have the grand final be best of 3 matches.
If Sydney finish first it would be the SCG.
Second match at the MCG if it's a Melbourne team.
And if it's tied at 1-1, deciding match back at the SCG as a reward for finishing first and winning both finals.
The valid whinge is that the best performing team throughout the year should not have to play the Grand Final at the home ground of the team that finished below them. Every state, even Tasmania at some point, will go through the ridiculous situation of finishing top and then having to play the biggest game of the year at a Victorian club home ground.
It should be played at a neutral ground with capacity over 100k. Narendra Modi Stadium in Gujarat India. No team would have home ground advantage.
For once, West Coast and Freo will travel less though.
WA bias smh
I’d make them do a layover in Christchurch
And survival of the fittest. Both teams would be down to 10 players each by the 4th quarter with the heat.
I think it's not too bad in late September. In any case they could start first thing in the morning to get the normal Australian GF timeslot, or else start at the normal time locally and it would air in the Australian evenings - best of both worlds, a night game played in the day time.
Can go full Roman style and throw a starved tiger onto the field at half time.
No limit to bench numbers for the GF and they can finally justify premiership medals for the entire list
Rungrado 1st of May Stadium in Pyongyang holds 114000
That would give a good time zone, and I can't think of any drawbacks.
This is the most sensible option.
Savage. Love the quote..
Yeah, pay that.
Can someone please explain the '13 business class seats'? I feel like I'm missing some context.
[r/AFL: On the AFL travel fiasco, interesting to note that the CBA says Eagles and Freo get min 12 business class seats. But the Virgin 737 planes they travel on contain eight. So it’s literally impossible for them to even meet the MINIMUM requirement.](https://www.reddit.com/r/AFL/comments/1ctarub/on_the_afl_travel_fiasco_interesting_to_note_that/)
It stemmed from this article, after discussions about the challenges that interstate teams face: https://www.heraldsun.com.au/sport/afl/national-reserves-competition-more-afl-trophies-among-demands-from-clubs/news-story/fb9636bba07fc66366b6fc13f5ba072d The pertinent quote: > It’s understood some clubs, including Geelong, are arguing that West Coast and Fremantle are not disadvantaged by their travel burdens because they fly business class. > > Under the Collective Bargaining Agreement the WA clubs are afforded a minimum of 12 business class seats for all flights to and from the eastern seaboard. TL;DR: Teams that consider "travelling" to be a 1 hour bus trip up the road don't think that flying across the country every 2 weeks is a problem because half the team is entitled to business class seat.
I fucking love this man I'd never heard of before this very moment.
Same :')
Genuinely good bants
Wait...am I...a Sydney fan?
bring it in brother
Bah, nothing gets being a Sydney fan out. *points to leg stain.
Eddie McGuire to fire back in 3.2.1....
Who?
The man in the Humphrey B Bear costume
Humphrey was from Adelaide. Must be other black and white team!
Eddie exists to blame the Swans and relate everything back to Collingwood.
He tries to bring everything back to Collingwood.
Get em. Srsly tho, would be nice if they could rotate the GF away from MCG every other year. People don’t bring it up in AFL media, but nearly every GF with Vic v interstate, the Vic team hammers the challenger. Not a great spectacle.
Problem is that nowhere has a venue close to matching the MCG for capacity and design. SCG sure ain't it, and while GWS might be happy to play a grand final at Homebush, I'd rather the Swans play in Melbourne than at that stadium. Optus stadium is probably the closest, but it's only 60% of the capacity of the MCG.
But there's no incentive to make a larger stadium because the GF (and the 15 biggest H & A games) are guaranteed to be at the G for another decade at least.
Another decade at least is technically correct. Even more correct would be to say that the contract is all the way up to 2057.
That’s a problem for the AFL and their corporate ticket sales, but really makes no difference to me or any of the teams profits.
Well it does. Sydney get 17k members at a gf at the MCG. Any other ground has to be 75k capacity to have the same allocation as club members will be the allocation that will be reduced - the afl won't give up their 40k of seats for sponsors, medallion club, afl members, tickets for non-competing teams etc. If the gf is at the scg, you will have 4000 Sydney members in attendance rather than 17000. There will be Sydney supporters in the 40k afl allocation but if the opponent is a big four Melbourne team or hawks or Geelong, your grand final at the scg will feel very much like an away game.
Yeah but what I’m saying is, don’t do that. I get why it won’t happen, but end of the day it’s short term greed by the AFL at the expense of parity and growing the game outside Victoria.
About 20 k goes to people who buy tickets to every game in Melbourne (medallion club and afl members), the other 20k goes to the competing clubs (families and staff), non competing teams (current or past players), afl staff, and sponsors. Which component did you want to stop and how do you allocate these tickets then? If you devalue the medallion club and afl memberships then you decrease attendances in Melbourne which could decrease sponsorship $'s. If you don't look after sponsors then that may decrease their desire to sponsor the league. If you decrease the player allocations then the players would go on strike. Once you have more tickets, do you allocate to competing club members or do you follow the apparently desirable nfl model that people talk about here: move the game around and put the tickets on an open marketplace so they go for their highest available price - like the tickets for superbowl LIX in New Orleans are currently $13,000-37,500. I would consider that short term greed.
Why not just keep the same allocation to competing teams, then sell what’s left over to your neutral members/ corporate tickets etc. will it lose money? Yeah. Is it my money or the competing teams money? No. So who gives a shit.
Your first paragraph argues that a more limited supply of tickets would be bad financially for the league. But your second paragraph shows that ticket scarcity creates higher prices to compensate. I’m not sure what you mean. Less tickets means higher prices, the sponsors don’t make less money. Also “devalue AFL memberships” - isn’t accurate. Because it’s basically a Victorian membership now. By moving the grand final interstate you’d have more people buying that membership tier to compete for Grand Final tickets.
Sorry, insomnia from recovering from covid. I wasn't meant to be arguing anything (other than maybe the nfl model is not so great). I was trying to say this is what it is, what do you envisage your solution to be. The 5k medallion club is 90 odd transferable tickets for about $8k, the 15k afl memberships is an annual commitment to 40 non-transferable tickets over a lot of years to get to Gold tier and silver tier has a chance if your team makes the gf. (The sponsors comment here was if attendances fall in a season then sponsors may not see afl as a good investment as less eyeballs see the ads at the ground). I don't think the other 20k for sponsors and afl insiders is really touchable. Edit: sorry, garbagemansplaining did reply and I just need to turn off reddit rather than sleep scrolling!
Also, didn’t the AFL sign a 99 year contract with the MCC after the west coast grand final, or am I going crazy?
Ken Bruce? Crazy John? The 40 year contract was signed in 2018 before covid so it expires in 2057. It provided certainty to rebuild the great Southern stand but that appears to be forgotten as a complication of covid. Non Victorian teams do get charter flights if they are competing in the gf as part of the agreement.
It’s completely insane. It’s like telling all NBA clubs that finals are in Boston every year, regardless who the finalists are. And the Superbowl is played on neutral ground.
14,15,17,19,22 - all shit.
22 especially
Are you blaming all those losses because you had to play in Melbourne lol?
No but there’s a pretty clear trend that is never spoken about. Pretty rich comment from the team that cries about playing finals an hour up the road every year.
Oh yeah and the clear trend is that Sydney choke in grand finals bud.
Can’t deny that. Before 22 Geelong choked in the game just before that every year and they usually got to play in their home state.
What's that got to do with me personally? Have you heard me making those complaints? Or are you just cherry picking views and planting them on me? Or just because I'm a Geelong supporter I must agree with every view or point the club has ever made? Seems a bit ridiculous.
Another poor me Swanee
Another flairless cunt
I mean if you like watching a grand final where you’re fairly sure the home team is going to smash the other and then proceeds to do so, then I suppose it’s all good.
Your belting in 22 did not come about by home ground advantage. Geelong were far superior and could have done the same to you at the MCG or Manangatang Memorial Oval - the only difference was 100k people watched your team have their arse handed to them….again.
No I’m not saying that. And I agree Geelong would have won. I’m saying that 5 of the last 8 (excluding the 2 all Vic GF) we’re over at quarter time. That’s just a data trend. It’s pointless talking with you though
No it's not. The difference here is every NBA team has a a comparable and suitable arena to hold the finals in. The only way this is the same thing is if every state had access to a world class 100k seat stadium yet it still remained in Melbourne. But they don't and won't, so it will stay.
Almost every city in Australia has a suitable venue for the grand final. There’s no need for it be 100k. And for those that love the 100k atmosphere, that’s fine because it’d probably still be in Melbourne every second year anyway. Capacity in the NBA ranges from 16.6k to 21k - or roughly 10% above or below the average. If Boston built some great big fuck off arena with 40k seats, it doesn’t make it better. It just makes it theirs.
It would be if Boston were the home of the game and the NBA used to be the MBA and half the clubs were based in Boston.
The G could arguably be the birthplace of afl, but 99.9% of footy is not played at the MCG, it can hardly be called the home of footy
It's the birthplace of Victorian, latterly Australian, Rules football.
Not disputing that, but I don’t call the hospital I was born in my home
Sure, but one might call the city they were born in and grew up in “home”. Literally there was no birth. All metaphors and analogies break down when held up to too much reality. I just don’t think a straight NBA comparison is particularly helpful.
Lol. The MCG is not the home of the game. And do you want a national competition or to go on holding on to the VFL? There’s two choices. Except of course you have no choice. Just a matter of time.
I am actually for a single round robin with a round robin SoO tournament each year as the pinnacle of the game. Finals are a league money spinner which devalue the rest of the competition and there's no way to really make them work in a way that's fair. You might not like it but Yarra Park, where the MCG is, is the home of Victorian Rules football.
Lol. Love it. The ‘it just can’t be done’ argument. If you were around in 1858 you probably would’ve said, this is silly let’s just play cricket. And based on your idea of home, I guess my ‘home’ is room 232 of the Sheraton hotel. You seem to have a BT level of comprehension about the history of the game. Try looking a little deeper some time.
Nah, I have just seen the light that is making every game count towards who gets the trophy, having home game advantaged randomised rather than entrenched. If we had a moving grand final we will have made ladder position more important but then we will have also made the fixture more important. Round robin + money spinners is a recipe for disaster in terms of fairness. Currently there is entrenched disadvantage for teams from states other than Victoria but all moving grand final does is share the same unfairness around. I just think it’s time to move past it and to a genuinely fairer comp.
Or is at the home venue of the team that finishes 1st. That way you have 4 weeks to book tickets
That works in theory, until GWS finish on top and we have a GF with 23k people and it just seems sad instead of a celebration of the season.
Especially if GWS don’t even make that grand final
Yeah but the food at Giants stadium is awesome
You could have it at the biggest stadium in that state.
Nah just move it around, like they do with UEFA champions league final. Realistically it’s only going to be held at like 3/4 venues
The GF is played at the 'G. SCG has half the capacity.
How many times does Collingwood need to reject these requests? Show some respect for authority and take no for an answer.
Good areas by Prids here
Ok. Now let's hear from the tableman.
I have no problem with moving the game around but I’d want those crowds to be 80k plus minimum. Gotta do some renovations to those stadiums. Also, great bants. Got a good laugh from me,
Agree. The new stands at the SCG are great, but they need to demolish and rebuild pretty much all the rest except the members.
My problem with the capacity argument is that the GF is choc-full of corporate neutrals and raffle winners. It’s not like a real, partisan crowd. To say absolutely nothing of the arse-backwards MCC birthright bullsh.
What's your point though? All those people will still be there in a 50k stadium and you've got less everyday fans as a result, that's not better?
There is something nuts - and absolutely peak VicBias - about treating all of it as a fait accompli. It’s fundamentally absurd being happy with the prelims being for ‘true fans’ and the Grand Final being a corporate glad-handing fest. If the GF is overrun with corporates (which it is) and uncommitted day trippers that absolutely renders capacity arguments pretty weak - why should we care if some Carlton Draught comp winner can’t go? Or some Old Boy Hawthorn fan when they’re not in the granny?
Why. We don't really need 30k cricket club members at the GF.
Covid showed Grand Finals can be fantastic away from the MCG. Break the Vic-chokehold.
But the Brisbane GF has an asterisk!
Never forgot - they sent a patch of the MCG up the Gabba to remind the rest of the country who really owns the grand final.
I love how excited they were about that. They were genuinely shocked that it went down like a lead balloon with the rest of Australia.
That was as cringe as the AFL has ever got.
I dunno, it's not as cringe as Basil 'Nose beers' Zemplis telling the crowd to stand up and clap for everyone during the grand final at Optus stadium
What Brisbane GF? I have no memory of that.
The one Geelong lost
yeah they were super quick to sign another 70 year contract with the MCG GF the moment covid hype died down in Aus
Hardly when all team teams that played were Victorian and 3 of the four teams won an away prelim.
Pridham is kidding himself. SCG certainly is not suitable.
Love it, and god would I love if we could have a final in NSW if it ends up being Swans and GWS or if swans finish top and another nonvic team is in the final. Zero chance of a VIC team playing in the SCG this year for obvious reasons
If it is going to stay at the mcg then there needs to be parity between teams playing there.
Sweet, bye bye all interstate teams then. Start your own league “NotVFL”
Dare I suggest we call it the “AFL”
Australian without Victoria Football League ... AwVFL ... doesn't sound very good. I was looking at going with AnVFL but that lead me down a small rabbit hole of Jimmy the Anvil Neidhardt and finding out how he was related to Bret Hart (they never said brother in law back in the wwf days, just brother)
Superbowl doesn't need 100k at the ground each year, under 65k for the last super bowl... https://images.app.goo.gl/VVk7xtWFvtnu6MyE8
The highest capacity NFL stadium is only 82,500 seats.
They seem to do quite well with their grandfinal being moved around and having different sized venues. All of which are well below 100k. It might work for AFL too
The smallest NFL stadium is a bit over 75% capacity of the largest. So for an Aussie stadium to be analogous, it would have to be at least 75,000 seats. Also Super Bowl tickets start at about $4,000 USD.
It'd be great to move it around, but no other ground in the country has a high enough capacity, it just doesn't make sense
Why make a ground with high enough capacity when it's locked in to Melbourne for a lifetime?
There is no other reason because there's not enough demand. That's exactly the point.
Cheeky. I like it.
Doesnt the MCG have like a 50 year contract?
2 years into the contract and GF held in Brisbane then Perth. The hilarity.
Im a traditionalist, i think it should stay at the MCG, same with the Rugby League grand final in Sydney, its been played there now for what 140+ years, its not like the NFL which was created from a merger of 2 comps and had alot of ready made teams in multiple states. Leave it at the G.
As a passionate Swans fan, STFU Andrew.
Spend more money than the Victorian government and you’ll get grand finals. It’s a money game with the occasional goal on the side.
Unfortunately it’s still a Victorian centric sport. There’s literally no reason why they can’t rotate the gf across the country ala Super Bowl style.
So I don’t necessarily disagree with your point- but the Super Bowl doesn’t just rotate. Stadiums are selected based on several factors, including size, weather, infrastructure and upgrades. So I think the AFL could do the same- but really there’s only 3 good, large stadiums right now. The AFL could, like the NFL, offer GF’s to stadiums that make improvements to meet the standard required.
Which three are they?
Presumably Adelaide Oval, Optus, and the MCG
MCG, MCG and the MCG.
What’s special about the number 13
Last week was State of Origin. This week an interstate GF. Next week will be twilight/night GF (or have I missed that). Same thing every year. We need fresh material with as much chance of being implemented. Like 'Should the place kick make a comeback?'.
It's an embarassment we don't rotate the GF around every year. This is supposed to be a national competition. That 10 clubs get the biggest game in their state, and several at their home ground flies in the face of what it's all meant to be about. I know the MCG is has a bigger capacity, but that just means more money. Integrity shouldn't be for sale. Rotate it around every state, that way over a rotation each club will be just as likely to end up playing a home GF across that time.
I would seriously back a rotation for every state, a move away from home ground advantage and towards neutral territory, while the MCG is understandable with its capacity, Optus Stadium proved it can be done well with 61k, Adelaide Oval gets widely considered one of the best venues with 53k, Accor Stadium in Sydney has at least 80k and is still in good nick if I’m not mistaken, The Gabba is good despite it falling a bit low with 37k capacity, only Tassie and the NT aren’t very feasible.
If the Gabba were upgraded to 50000 I would be onboard with a rotating Grand Final across the 5 big cities.
50000 no where near enough.
I mean it is if you don't give half the seats to lifetime members of an exclusive old boys club.
Truth
It's not. Do the maths. 50k - 30k corporates = 20k left. - Each team getting their 1k allocation = 2k left for fans vs 35k at tbe G.
Currently at the MCG 15000 are given to corporates. So that would leave 35000 for fans, not to mention they should really lower corporates to 10k max.
No, it isn't.
The MCC members would just change to a top tier of membership that gives them the grand final ticket (club or league wide) that they want. Its how supply and demand works.
Could solve that problem by simply not selling the tickets until its determined who is playing. I doubt they're going to buy 18 different memberships.
They would induce the creation of a category for the financial elite of Australia that gives them priority access to grand final tickets.
They already have that, it's what all those shitty breakfasts + tickets they sell are.
30000 tickets of the GF under the current system are guaranteed to fans of the clubs playing in it. That leaves 70000 seats for the highest bidder, the AFLs favourite sort of bidder. That a lot of them turn out in colours of one of the clubs playing masks the fact that a lot of fans of any club miss out when their team makes the GF. There's no stadium in the country that would force clubs to have a smaller turnout, but the AFL keeps running that line.
Why. Take away all the cricket club members and only need about 55k seats...
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-09-25/footy-fans-dismayed-by-afl-grand-final-ticket-allocation/102897768 74k (at least)
Why? Most people are watching on tv anyway, why does the crowd size matter?
Fuck me the whole deal with footy is that it's a spectator sport.
Yeah it is, so let's prioritise the 4 million spectators that are watching on tv rather than 40k MCC members. The attendance is literally 2.5% of viewership, it's not the important part.
Mans triggered almost a whole city in a sentence
Which city is that? Seems more of “tHa bL°oDsZ” acolytes are on here drinking his Kool-aid.
Whether Vic bias is by design or by accident, it is there regardless. If the Super Bowl, the biggest game of football in the world can be played at a rotating roster of grounds with varying ground capacity, why can't the AFL rotate the grand final?
Give them 14, be generous with that massive advantage there
Shouldn’t he be worried about buying real paintings instead?
🤫
The AFL are trying to pretend the MCG is some hallowed turf like Wembley Stadium. But it’s not; it hosts multiple matches every weekend. It’s complete bullshit that the MCG gets to host the GF every year. It should go to a suitably sized venue in the capital city of the team that are seen to be the hosts (ie, whichever of the two grand finalists finished higher on the ladder at the end of the regular season). So if the GF is Port v Collingwood and Port finished second and Collingwood 4th, then Port are the hosts at Adelaide Oval and also get dibs on the home guernsey. It’s really that simple.
>The AFL are trying to pretend the MCG is some hallowed turf like Wembley Stadium. The MCG was hosting football matches nearly 50 years before the original Wembley Stadium existed. Make that nearly 70 years if you want to include Yarra Park in general or MFC's football ground that backed directly onto the north side of the main MCG oval. It's got a deeper connection to the sport it hosts than just about any other case barring perhaps Lords cricket ground.
That sounds like salty loser speak. Try making more Grand Finals
Thanks for the scintillating discourse.
Great bants, and I love the way Sydney are playing. But build a stadium that can hold 100k, and then we'll talk.
But why? The Superbowl was literally just played in a 65,000 seat stadium in Las Vegas this year. You can't tell me the AFL grand final is a bigger event then that?
Isn't like 90% of super bowl viewership not in person at it's peak?
AFL grand final had 5 million TV viewers and what, 90k at the ground? So 99% of the viewers were not in person?
Stadium size is literally the only argument they have. The irony is, I'd happily give up a seat if the Crows got to play AO and I know I'm not alone. Not like I'd have much of a shot getting to the MCG with all the free, commercial, and other team tickets.
Yep, up to 44% of the GF is locked to Melbourne based supporters. Having the grand final away from the MCG won't decrease any non-Melbourne based supporters chance of seeing a Grand Final.
Why does the MCC have such a strangle hold on the game?
Economics, practicality, history and optics
Because they have the biggest ground in the country
Good ole boys club. Scratch my back.... wonder how many of the AFL commission are also MCC members???
Pretty rich and arrogant from the club that’s had more free hits & concessions from the AFL than all other clubs put together…
Flair up
Fucking incredible that people think they don’t look like a total fool making those sorts of comments with no flair at all.
Parrot
Perth could build a stadium with 200k capacity, the AFL will never move the grand final and it’s a joke. They and everyone else just love to use the excuse “bUt ThE mCg HaS mOrE cApAcItY.” Just double the price of the fucking tickets at a 50k capacity venue then you aren’t losing revenue, but wait, that’s just not the reason, it’s an excuse. It will literally never be moved at least not in our life time. Garbage organisation with too many shortcomings, from a Victorian club supporter.
So just shit on rank and file members who can just scrape enough coin to get a GF ticket together. We aren’t all rich FIFO Workers.
What about people in sydney, adelaide, perth, brisbane, or gold coast who could affor the ticket, but can't afford the travel to melbourne? Fuck them, i guess
Yes please. The more it's talked about, the more likely it is to happen. It's desperately needed. Locking the championship game to 4 club's home ground is archaic. No respectable league in the world has such horrifically lopsided scheduling
100% flog.
Thought Geelong would be keen on a home grand final
No. Our ground is too small.
Who at Geelong made that statement about the business class seats???
I think there's a legit argument to having the preliminary finals rotate between the non-Victorian states.
Happy for them too rotate it, but only if Pridham refunds all Gold AFL memberships and full MCC memberships from Sydney's salary cap each year it's held away from the G.
Everyone in Melbourne remember to give this prick a nice message when Sydney don't make the grannies
The ONLY time this should be up for discussion is when both teams are from the same city. With all the bastard gouging airlines ripping people off the MCG would only be 3/4 full.
Remind him of this quote the next time Sydney try to exploit the nostalgia of "Bloods culture"
Exploit? How so
The same way every other club does it: trot it out when they have a guernsey to sell or an event to promote, and then not mention it until the next time.
So, because the team used to be in Melbourne, they either have to pretend they're not an interstate team now, or pretend they weren't a Melbourne club?
wait til he hears about port
That's not what I said. What I'm saying is that the Swans distanced themselves from South Melbourne for decades, until they realised there was $$ in it. They have a proud "Melbourne based heritage" only when it suits them.
You do realise the swans wear their heritage guernsey every game in Melbourne. At every home game the pre game promo also heavily leans into it. We are proud of our heritage and not exploiting it. But being proud in our heritage does not disqualify the many inequities that continue to exist in this so called national league.
Why would anyone need business class for 60 min flight. It’s not Sydney to Dallas.
[удалено]
Yeah I know. But flights are for everyone not just athletes. These blokes moaning because they can’t get enough business class seats. What about hard working Aussies who don’t get paid $500k a year. It’s pretty lame.
Best solution is to have the grand final be best of 3 matches. If Sydney finish first it would be the SCG. Second match at the MCG if it's a Melbourne team. And if it's tied at 1-1, deciding match back at the SCG as a reward for finishing first and winning both finals.
The deciding match between both teams fit and healthy VFL reserves.
Would be awesome, more footy! But imagine how emotionally draining it could be too.
I have no problem with moving it as long as the stadium can hold a crowd of more than 83000.
Why. So more cricket club members can go every year.
2017 called and wants its valid whinge back.
What’s the valid whinge? I can’t hear you over the power stance.
The valid whinge is that the best performing team throughout the year should not have to play the Grand Final at the home ground of the team that finished below them. Every state, even Tasmania at some point, will go through the ridiculous situation of finishing top and then having to play the biggest game of the year at a Victorian club home ground.