Ralphy discusses his winners and losers of the AFL fixture

Jon Ralph says the AFL’s weighted formula which sees the lower teams have an easier run has ensured the fixture is as good as they can possibly get it.

“I love the weighted formula, where if you’re in the bottom third you’ll probably play an easier fixture, they’ve got the 6-day breaks right, they’ve got eight Thursday nights,” Ralph told KB on Hungry for Sport.

Below he discusses his winners and losers from the fixture revealed today.

Winners

"The Demons for me are very big winners. Now we all know that the Demons can explode,’ he said

“(They’ve got one Friday night game), They’ve also got Queen’s Birthday, they’ve got a Monday night game, which is ANZAC Eve, which went very well last time, it’s a Richmond home game.

“They play only Adelaide Crows (of the top 8) twice, and then North Melbourne, St. Kilda, Collingwood (North finished in the 8 but we don’t think they will this year, they play them twice) and then they play Carlton twice. Should be an easy beat.”

“I think the Tigers are big winners. We know they’re big winners coz they’re an ordinary side.

“No Friday night games but from a match-up point of view the Tigers only play GWS twice (of the top 8).

“They play St. Kilda twice (of those “double-up” encounters), and Carlton, Fremantle and Brisbane Lions are those top 6; they play all three of those twice, and they don’t play Essendon twice.

“Now we know Essendon are a bottom 6 side but we believe they’ll be “somewhere” around the finals equation.
Losers

Ralph believes Collingwood with their lack of primetime exposure after Round 3 are clearly the big losers with the fixture.

“The Pies are the big losers. They’ve got 3 Thursday and Friday night games, only 2 Friday nights in total – Round 1, 2 and 3 – and then we don’t see them again on the big stage,” he said.

“I think they’ve got a lot more Fox Footy games - which is great for us at Fox Footy - but not probably good if you want to maximise your marketing potential.”

Despite Richmond being winners in terms of fixture difficulty, he says he did ask AFL CEO Gillon McLachlan whether they deserve the season opening fixture against Carlton and wasn’t overly convinced about the response he received.

I asked Gill and he said “if we were going to take it off them, we would’ve taken it off them before… we do like that fixture,” said Ralph.

“Because they haven’t got any Friday night games and they’ve got the season opener, the only reason they play another big game is because they play the next Thursday against Collingwood.

“They have to play that game – it’s a seven day break, they couldn’t schedule anyone there - so they could’ve had the season opener on a Thursday and not one other marquee game apart from Dreamtime at the G.

“Pretty sorry state for the Tigers.”