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This has been on my mind a while now..................
Ideally I would love to see the Competition consisting of 16 teams.
They would be broken up into 2 Conferenes.
Conference A will consist of the AFL Reserves Stand Alone Teams (Geelong, Collingwood, Sydney, etc) and some of the 'stronger' alignments teams.
Conference B will consist of the VFA Stand ALone Teams (Port, Frankston, Tasmania, etc) and the partial alignments teams.
The season will consist of 22 rounds falling in line with the AFL season.
Each team will play each other once (therefore 15 rounds been played) with the remaining 7 matches to be played against teams in your Conference.
When AFL Stand Alones or Alignments play VFA Stand Alones then the 12/10 rule will apply.
When they are playing each other, then it is unlimited as to the amount of AFL listed players they can use.
Each conference will consist of 8 teams.
There will be a Final 4 in each Conference.
The Final Series for Conference A, will be over 4 weeks as per the AFL Season. The Grand Final will be played on the Friday night before the AFL Grand Final at Telstra Dome. With Geelong pulling a lot of the crowd to the VFL Grand Final then imagine what crowd they would get if they were playing Collingwood? 25,000 would not seem unrealistic.
The Final Series for Conference B, will be over 3 weeks with the Grand Final been played in its traditional spot, ie, the Sunday before the AFL Grand Final. Due to the smaller band of supporters that follow teams in this conference then the Grand Final can be played at Port. Port should be able to cater for a crwod of 10,000.
By having Conference A having their Grand Final on the night before the AFL Grand Final, then you eliminate the embarrassing situation, like what happened this year with King getting 2 Premiership medals, and Blake getting none!
With 8 teams only been allowed in Conference A, then the remaining AFL aligned clubs will have to play in Conference B. This will not suit them as much because they are restricted with the 12/10 rule when playing Port, Frankston, Tassie (and hopefully another Stand Alone Club). Therefore what will occur is that the Top 2 aligned teams will be promoted to Conference A for the following year, whilst the bottom 2 teams in Conference A will be demoted to Conference B. This will not suit Conference A teams for the reasons that I stated earlier, ie, they are restricted in games due to the 12/10 rule.
The inequality that is currently existing needs to be very closely looked at. I think this model attempts to make it fair for everyone and gives all clubs a realistic chance of success.
