All this tanking talk and the way to solve the problem got me thinking.

Anyway here goes:

- Scrap priority picks in the draft completely

- Expand the comp to 18 teams

- Shorten the H&A season so each team plays each other only once (then reverse the venues every year)

---> So H&A season is 17 rounds

- Top 8 play off in September for the Premiership as it is now

- Bottom 10 play off in September for the top 10 draft picks using an adapted final 8 system as follows

----> Arrange the bottom 10 in reverse order (so 18th spot is the equivalent of finishing top of the ladder if you get my drift)

----> Now, week one of the "Draft Finals" (last weekend of August) is two elimination finals 9 vs 12 and 10 vs 11. The two losers are out and receive picks 10 and 9 respectively in the draft. First weekend in September sees the two winners from the previous weekend play another elimination final against teams in positions 13 & 14, while the remaining play off in qualifying finals (18 vs 15 and 17 vs 16). Qualifying finals winners get a week off while the losers play the winners of the two Elimination finals and so on and so forth until we get a winner who receives the number one pick in the draft.

Anyone still reading? okay good.

Advantages of this system

Fixturing is much fairer, you can't complain about having to play strong teams twice in the year, etc

Season shorter so potentially less impact on players, perhaps allowing them to extend their careers (in terms of number of years able to compete at the highest level).

Longer off-season period more time for those on long-term injury lists to recuperate.

More excitement for the fans, especially fans of the bottom teams as there is more at stake.

Now the drawbacks

Less home & away fixtures means less money for the AFL (this is a big one, the gate revenues from a full 5 rounds are lost in this system 40 games in total). Note however that this would be offset by 17 extra H&A games due to the expansion of the comp to 18 teams plus 11 extra "finals" games in the bottom 10 "Draft Finals" giving a total of 28 extra games so only a deficit of 12 games on the current system. Not too much impact. Plus, the fact the season is shorter would probably mean more interest in the fewer games and more finals games means bigger crowds I would think, or at least hope.

Fewer H&A also means fewer blockbusters unfortunately so that would impact badly on revenue.

Ticket prices likely to go up as a result of this.

Talent pool of footballers diluted with more teams (but it's going to happen anyway so you can't fight it, also it just means more guys will get a chance to play AFL instead of lingering on lists for a couple of years and then being cast off, like Fergs, Godders, etc)

Shorter season means less of the year for AFL fans to be obsessed with it all (I actually think this is a good thing, but I'm sure plenty wouldn't agree with me).

So...dare I ask your opinions on this?

So the H&A season finishes in the second-last week of August the the top-8 sides have a week off before finals? Not sure if that would catch on.

Also not sure how seriously some of the bottom-8 teams might take their finals series... Is it worth risking a star player to advance yourselves a couple of spots up the draft order? Definitely couldn't allow gambling on these games as some teams would be fully serious and others might adopt a youth-policy as a pre-pre-season...

Good thinking though, and although it took awhile to get my head around your bottom-10 system i can see the logic in it. In an ideal world it would be great but I can guarantee that for the next 10 years minimum there will be 2 derbies, showdowns, Coll-Ess, Coll-Carl, Ess-Carl matches in every season... The dollar is the driving force behind the fixturing, fairness and equality are the last considerations.