All good points Oz. Very devilish.
In the end it really doesn't matter I guess.
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All good points Oz. Very devilish.
In the end it really doesn't matter I guess.
Considering how close the ladder is this year, perhaps it's time for the AFL to adopt the EPL way and play all nine fixtures at the same time Saturday afternoon to stop manipulation of results by the teams. (Leave that for the AFL and their umpires).
All it gives is the chance for the AFL to garner even more unwarranted media exposure and column inches. We survived perfectly well until a couple of years ago without a floating fixture, and the only reason we have the bye is because the code is completely beholden to the gambling companies, who do not respond kindly to mass player resting in R23.
Now that we have the bye, the floating fixture is not needed at all IMO.
Because the TV networks would hate it, the AFEL would never start all R23 games simultaneously. The only reasonable argument I can see for retaining a floating draw for R23 would be to at least start the 2 or 3 games that direcly impact each other at the same time. So if 2 teams sitting 8th and 9th are on the same points with similar percentage, they could be both put on Saturday night (for example).