LONG gone is the theme of "100 minutes of football".

Twenty-minute quarters. Time-on whenever the ball goes across a boundary line. Long breaks between goals (for an "important message from our sponsors"). Blood rule. And perhaps an unexpected pause to capture a pig at full forward ....

Port Adelaide coach Ken Hinkley has joined the debate on the length of an AFL game that began well before the COVID pandemic forced a cut to the time dedicated to quarters (16 minutes rather than 20 last season).

The AFL competitions committee put the game's length on the agenda in 2019 when Melbourne coach Simon Goodwin declared: "If you look around the world in terms of the game, our game is incredibly long."

Australian football, however, is not alone in looking at the clock. Fans of professional MLB baseball in North America - and devotees of Joe Buck's work behind the microphone - know that sport is tormented by the clock. Games now can blow out from the traditional two hours at the ball park to become three-hour affairs. And studies show today's younger generations (who need to be won over in a highly competitive sports entertainment market) believe "a quick game is a good game".

Hinkley at the weekend, after Port Adelaide cruised through the second half to close a 54-point win against Essendon at Adelaide Oval, said:

My personal opinion, the game is too long; it has gone back to being too long.

The game (against Essendon) showed in those last 15 minutes ... it could have finished (earlier) and it would not have been a bad thing.

Friday night (Geelong v Brisbane at Kardinia Park) went down to the wire ... two team willing themselves to the end. But it was not a great spectacle of pure football highlights.

My personal opinion is the game is a little bit too long for the way we are asking the players to play. As fatigue sets in, the spectacle becomes less.

Sixteen minutes was too quick. There was some noise about 18; for me it would have been okay at 18.

With 75 rotations, the spectacle becomes a bit of a challenge in those last 10 minutes if the game is done and dusted.

So who makes the final call now that more players and coaches are taking issue with the length of the game?

There will be fans who want "done and dusted" games to finish with Port Adelaide putting Essendon to the sword with a percentage-boosting charge to the final siren. 

Other fans will slip away - knowing the game is safe - to be first in the queue at the bus stop or first out of the car park ... or first at the bar for the post-match celebration.

In a game paying many of the bills with the big cheques from television rights, there will be the critical say of television executives. Roll back the tape on Tim Worner from his final days as chief executive at the Seven Television Network, the AFL's official free-to-air commercial television partner. In 2018, he screamed, "I want more goals ... (commercial breaks after a goal is scored) are the most-valuable 30 seconds of screen real estate in Australian television."

Such remarks give greater understanding to the levers AFL football boss Steve Hocking has been pulling with rule changes.

Generally, there is the belief no entertainment event - even at the movie theatre - should go for more than two hours. Hence why the game of Australian football was long built around "100 minutes", four 25-minute quarters with another 20 minutes for the breaks. A neat two hours on a Saturday afternoon ...

Is it time to roll back the clock?