Ray Warren: AFL finals system is better
If you want to get serious, the top 8 is a simply money making device. Keeping the interest among fans for as long as possible is a fine concept, but it becomes laughable when a team can win 11 of its 24 games and still make the playoffs.
Where I have a real problem, though, is the fact the AFL is now using our old finals system, while we’ve taken the one they dumped.
AFL got it right.
This weekend should be 1 v 4 and 2 v 3, with the bottom four teams playing each other in sudden death.
Teams five, six, seven and eight do not deserve a second chance.
It seems so simple.
It should be noted the decision to stick with this MacIntyre system was made by the clubs.
Therein lies another problem with our game.
The clubs should not be voting on such important decisions. The head body, without club allegiances, should be making hard line decisions, not club CEO’s.
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I think we should drop the McIntyre final 8 system. When you think about it, if 3rd loses to 6th and both 1st and 2nd lose then not only will 3rd be eliminated (which is bad enough) but 6th will get the week off! So you could have a situation in which 3rd wins significantly more games than 6th during the regular season but happens to put in a poor performance and loses to 6th in the first week of the finals and then if both 1st and 2nd lose then 3rd will be eliminated while 6th advances to week 3!!
I assume one of the reasons why the McIntyre system was used is to provide incentives for teams to advance further up the top 8. I believe we should adopt the final 8 system used by the ARL in 95 and 96 with the added feature of, from weeks 1 to 3, the highest ranked (where the rankings are based on the regular season and are not “updated” through the finals as so to speak) team of each game gets to play at home. I believe this system would be both fair while also providing incentives for teams to advance further up the eight.
By the way, I also have an idea for state of origin. Change all three games to Monday nights and have NO games played on the weekend directly prior to it. Also have no monday night game on the weekend before the weekend that is directly prior to an origin game. That way the selectors could name the sides on the sunday night or monday morning and effectively give the teams a week to get together and prepare for the origin game. Also players who participated in the origin game would then have at least 4 days to recover for the next round (4 days from monday night to friday night). I think it is important to have an origin game on either a mon, tue, wed or thu night. That way schoolkids, work colleagues etc see each other at work or school on the day of the game and can talk about it and “build up to it” and then the very next day after the game the school kids and work colleagues come back to work or school and can talk about the origin game that happened directly the night before. Out of these 4 days Monday night probably is the optimum night that provides the best balance between giving the origin teams time to prepare for the game and giving the origin players enough time to recover after the origin game before the next round.