TO bye or not to bye ...
By accident rather than design - and to prove some good can come from a pandemic - the AFL has fixed an unintentional mistake.
The pre-finals bye - introduced in 2016 - is gone. It will be replaced by a week off after the preliminary finals and leading to the AFL grand final on Saturday, September 25 (increasingly likely to be held at Perth Stadium rather than the MCG).
The bye - that mirrors the lead-up to American football's NFL Super Bowl - now seems to be in the right place.
AFL chief executive Gillon McLachlan marked the start of his time in the big chair at AFL House by introducing the pre-finals bye after the 2014 and 2015 home-and-away series were marked by irrefutable claims of "tanking" in round 23.
First Fremantle coach Ross Lyon and then North Melbourne mentor Brad Scott rested several players once it became clear there was nothing to gain in playing at full-strength in their finales to the home-and-away series.
The pre-finals bye was supposed to give all eight finalists that extra week for recovery - a blessing that perfectly served the Western Bulldogs during their four-week run from Perth to Melbourne to Sydney and back to the MCG to end their 62-year premiership drought.
But sometimes too much rest can be damaging.
From 2016 to last season's finals, just four of the 10 winners from the qualifying final reached the grand final.
The pre-finals bye - as Brisbane coach Chris Fagan has repeatedly argued - was diminishing the rewards from successfully chasing a top-four finish.
Even when the "floating fixture" was introduced for round 23, a theme that should have minimised the temptation to tank during the last weekend of the home-and-away series, the pre-finals bye survived and compromised the merit of a top-four finish.
The timeline for the qualifying final winners would be: Play round 23, rest, play qualifying final, rest, play preliminary final. If, as Port Adelaide had this season, a qualifying final winner finished the home-and-away season on a Friday night, the calendar could show just one game in 28 days.
Port Adelaide's timeline to its home preliminary final this season is:
Round 23 - Friday night win against Western Bulldogs
Qualifying final - Friday night win against Geelong
Preliminary final - Saturday night assignment against Brisbane or the Western Bulldogs after a 15-day break.
This involves three matches in 22 days. This is rewarding a top-two team.
The bye between preliminary finals and the grand final also removes the long-held debate - that lingers hard with Brisbane premiership coach Leigh Matthews from 2004 - of one preliminary final winner having 24 hours more time to prepare than the other grand finalist.
Both grand finalists this season will have lengthy lead-ins to the biggest match of the season.
Both grand finalists will be better primed by the break.
If any bye is to remain when the world returns to "normal" in a post-pandemic world, it is probably the one before the grand final rather than the elimination and qualifying finals.
To buy in ... or not bite?
Former Federal politician Christopher Pyne wants to pull down the old scoreboard at Adelaide Oval to build a northern grandstand under the premise the extra 7000 seats would secure hosting rights to the AFL grand final (an event that is locked to the MCG until almost 2060 in normal circumstances).
As much as the theme of "sharing the love" with the AFL grand final in a different city each year - like the NFL Super Bowl and the UEFA Champions League final - is to be fully endorsed, the real issue here is not the capacity or the design of the 53,500-seat Adelaide Oval.
Hosting rights to major sporting events are won with the cheque book. The Queensland State government proved this last year in securing the AFL grand final at the 42,000-seat Gabba in Brisbane.
Adelaide Oval has only two features that dates to the 20th century - the old scoreboard and the northern mound. The rebuild was designed to give the Oval pavilions rather than a colosseum grandstand that closed a circle on the sporting field.
Adelaide Oval has distinctive ends. It is not like Perth Stadium or the Docklands in west Melbourne where being behind one goal is the same as sitting behind the other.
No-one would recommend Lord's be bulldozed, have the slopping field levelled and the members' pavilion replaced by a concrete-and-metal grandstand to increase capacity.
Adelaide Oval does not need a northern grandstand.
In 2017, Pyne urged Port Adelaide fans to "adopt" his Adelaide Football Club during the finals series as an act of support for South Australia. He misjudged the depth of the rivalry. He has misread the carefully constructed design of Adelaide Oval.
