Leigh Matthews calls for major change to Gather Round amid fixture disadvantage - Footy Furnace

there's a stat somewhere like Pendlebury has never played in Geelong. Don't give me this rubbish about the comp being unfair for victorians, until the AFL stop favouring big Vic clubs we won't ever have an even comp

Adelaide and Port Adelaide (and every non-Victorian club) travel interstate 10 -11 times a year. My nose bleeds for the poor Victorian clubs that occasionally travel interstate 5 or 6 times including Gather round. What is the real strain on football departments? Managing your team and their recovery on the road. Utter malarkey Leigh.

2 yrs in a row now that Freo have had stay in S.A for 10 days because our next game after Gather Round is in S.A.

You are joking Leigh

If you want to make competition better, merge a few Victorian clubs. North & Footscray should merge with St Kilda folded into Hawthorn. Supporters can still follow the merged entity & St Kilda can still have a team at VFL level. It benefits the competition as Collingwood etc all have to play outside Victoria & not have as many ‘away’ matches in Melbourne. Until Gather Round, Hawthorn’s first 3 matches were at the MCG.

Lethal comments are getting tired. Great player dumb mentality on the game in general

As much as I love Aussie Rules, the imbalanced fixture is a bit of an issue. The European soccer model is much more straightforward (and is much easier to implement there than it is here, for a variety of reasons). Every team gets their own unique stadium, and every fixture is played twice with teams taking in turns at the home team. Having 18 AFL teams play 2 fixtures against every other team would equate to 34 rounds, which would be an impossible workload. A 17 round season is the closest you can get to a somewhat balanced fixture, but would probably be financially unviable (we saw it implemented in 2020, only because there was no other way to wrap up the season with the nation in lockdown, especially Victoria).

If we had a Gather Round showdown it wouldn't be the same atmosphere because of how gather round tickets are sold. Showdowns are an entire calendar event in SA, you'd be taking that away if its the same week as gather round.

Is this the same Mathews when as coach of Brisbane he was happy to play away games against Melbourne at the Gabba for 3 or 4 years in a row?

Jimmy nailed this , never going to fair sadly . I have no issue with gather round once the teams that lose the home games are rotated every year

So 17 games at the MCG for Collingwood, Richmond etc NOT EVEN INCLUDING FINALS is all good, but 12 games at Adelaide oval is too much. If the Adelaide teams play against vic sides in gather round it makes the fixture more fair than any other possibility!

Such bullcrap. Melbourne teams get 20 home games a year why not let crows and power have 12

Leigh Mathews belly-aches about Adelaide teams ------------------- But says nothing about all the games in Victoria. ------- 🙄

Having the Crows and Port play the last game of gather round would seem to me to be a great way to wind up a weekend of footy in Adelaide.

Matthews is wrong. Collingwood should be forced to play the same number of ‘home’ games at the MCG as Adelaide teams play on the Adelaide oval. Argue with that!

Over the last few years Richmond played all those games at the mcg and also in finals and your worried Adelaide teams have an advantage in gather Round ..you want them to play on same day instead of a day appart .. gee you need to look at all teams equality if you are to to that … I think some commentators are running out of content.. maybe we need to start limiting the amount of commentators and get rid of a few they have been on the gravy train to long !

I think every interstate team should be forced to play in Melbourne every week to accomodate these poor Victorian clubs.

When there are twenty teams have two leagues where everyone plays each other twice. Top 6 from the top division take the top 6 spots for finals while the top two teams from the bottom division take 7 and 8 in the finals. The bottom two teams from the top division get relegated to the bottom division for the following year while the top two teams from the bottom division get promoted. Also get rid of North Melbourne and at least one other team from Melbourne, they are diluting the talent base and serve no purpose while also creating a big advantage for Melbourne sides with extra home games.

Totally wrong. MCG is the home of grand final, other teams get more opportunity there.

They should make gather round around the states as circuit annual event (except Vic) or have it in NSW & Qld one year and WA & SA the next year.