The AFL's biggest reason for considering a 17-5 fixture model is to reduce or completely eliminate boring/one-sided games towards the end of the season. The reality is that it is likely to result in MORE "dead rubbers".

If this model comes in the bottom 6 will be reduced to playing a round robin amongst themselves for nothing.

The top 6 after round 17 are guaranteed to make the finals and can rest all their best players until September, especially now that finishing top 4 is not the massive advantage it was before the pre-finals bye was introduced. As if they are going to go flat out over the last 5 weeks against each other when they can save themselves for the games that actually count.

That leaves the middle 6. In the current system they are still alive to make the finals anyway, and can finish anywhere from 1st to 18th. In the 17-5 system the best they can do is 7th. And imagine if after round 17 there is a 4 or 5 game gap between 8th and 9th - then the middle 6 have nothing to play for too.

So by jumping at shadows, in a worst case scenario, the AFL may create a fixture where the last 5 weeks produce 45 "dead rubbers" in an attempt to eliminate 5 or 10 dud games.