AFL news 2023: AFL finals wildcard weekend, AFL fixture 2023 | Herald Sun
AFL chief executive-elect Andrew Dillon will on Tuesday ask clubs their views on a wildcard weekend that could see teams outside the eight able to play their way into September.
The league’s 18 chief executives will meet at Werribee Mansion across Tuesday and Wednesday to discuss a range of ideas to grow the game across coming seasons.
Dillon will host the clubs in his first official gathering, with departing CEO Gillon McLachlan not in attendance as he prepares to leave AFL House later this year.
The Herald Sun understands as part of the agenda item clubs have been asked their views on fixturing innovation, including the positioning of AFL byes and any potential changes to the finals system.
The league’s wildly successful Gather Round came out of a discussion with AFL captains last year about how the AFL could minimise the pre-season load for players and whether the league could replace a pre-season game with an extra home-and-away round.
Andrew Dillon will put the proposition to clubs on Tuesday. (Photo by Dylan Burns/AFL Photos via Getty Images)
The league has made no indication it will change its current eight-team finals system but is open to a discussion about how it can maximise its finals system.
The NBA’s play-in tournament has proved wildly popular in recent years as teams ranked 7th-10th in each conference compete for the final two spots in the finals.
In the AFL a play-in tournament could be as simple as the eighth and ninth-placed teams playing off across the pre-finals bye for the final spot in September.
In the NBA the seventh and eighth placed teams play off for the seventh seed.
Then the loser of that 7 v 8 game plays the winner of a contest between the ninth and tenth-ranked teams for the eighth and final spot in the conference.
Should the AFL introduce a wildcard weekend?
The VFL this year will feature a similar play-in weekend, but the seventh-placed team will play the tenth-placed team and the eighth and ninth-placed teams will play off.
The victors will enter the VFL finals, with the highest-ranked team in that four-team play-off taking the No. 7 position on the ladder.
Eddie McGuire has continually pushed for a revamp of the fixture. Picture: Jake Nowakowski
Former Collingwood president Eddie McGuire has long pushed for a radical revamp of the AFL fixture that could see teams in the bottom ten stay in the finals hunt for longer.
“As it is now, we get teams who (effectively) have their seasons over so early in the year and that’s not good for the players or the fans,” he said last year.
Clubs are keen for some certainty on the football department soft cap, which is scheduled to rise to $7.2 million next year.
Collingwood is one of the power clubs keen for a $2 million uplift to pre-Covid levels but the league is not yet in a position to rule on the 2024 figure.
Clubs are open to spending above a figure currently set at $7.2 million for 2024 but they do face prohibitive taxes of up to 200 per cent for every dollar they spend over the set limit.
