Legend tees off on ‘diabolical’ fixture ‘worst in world sport’
Geelong champion Jimmy Bartel has unloaded on the AFL’s fixture, calling it the worst “in world sport”.
It comes following the league releasing the schedule for the final two rounds of the season, giving fans just two weeks notice to get their head around them and organise tickets.
Jimmy Bartel. Nine
The league has gone with a floating fixture for round 24 across the last few seasons, hoping to ensure as much interest as possible as teams jockey for finals positioning. This season, however, they added round 23 to that uncertainty.
The fixture has been largely panned this season, with the AFL unrelenting on the unpopular Opening Round, which starts the season in New South Wales and Queensland with half of the league on a bye. This leads to numerous further bye weeks and an uneven ladder for the first chunk of the season.
Bartel believes the combination of frustrations at the start and end of the season, coupled with further issues, has led to a poorly constructed fixture overall.
“The diabolical AFL’s fixture (this season); whoever has put that together, it’s possibly the worst fixture that’s ever been put together in world sport,” Bartel told 3AW.
“And that’s not just me speaking off the top of my head. I’ve got a list here.
“Opening Round was a disaster, nine weeks of byes across more than a third of the season that no one asked for, we’ve had Friday double headers that no one asked for which actually included a lot of the blockbuster games for teams outside of Victoria because we’re an Australia-wide game, not the VFL.
“Overlapping games for no reason, Brisbane having a four-day break for Easter while Hawthorn has an 18-day break before Easter as well.
“Not moving the St Kilda versus GWS game to avoid a clash with the Socceroos, Sunday games being set for 3:20pm and 4:40pm when we have so many other timeslots, adding to the fact that we had overlapping games when we had teams on byes and more windows to play games.
“Two Saturday twilight games for no reason, this floating fixture debacle only being set 15 days out from round 23 and two floating rounds instead of one.
“By what measure has this (fixture) been a success?”
The AFL has four games fixtured for this coming Saturday; two that overlap in the afternoon and two that overlap at night. That decision has been made to give clean air to the Australia versus Ireland AFLW game in the middle. Sunday’s games also overlap, with 1:10pm, 3:15pm and 4:40pm slots.
As Bartel laid out, the league has also been criticised for scheduling Friday night double-headers that overlap, leading to one game that flies under the radar.
Round 20’s Derby between Fremantle and West Coast took place alongside Melbourne versus Geelong last Friday night and not only overlapped significantly, but started just after 6pm in Perth, which left fans scrambling to get to the venue in time for the start of the highly anticipated clash.
The AFL has shelved primetime double headers for the final month of the season.
