After a hectic final day of the AFL trade period that saw 22 of the 31 deals completed in the hours before the deadline, Anthony Hudson and Terry Wallace discuss whether it can become a made for TV event.
The current trade period is spread across ten days, which several football identities believe is too long.
With the AFL always looking at new ways to spruce up their events, Wallace contends that deadline day has become so big, he would not be surprised if a primetime finish is seriously considered in the future.
“Is it getting big enough that it could nearly run that last few hours into primetime?” he asked on SEN’s Crunch Time.
“I just think it’s just becoming so big now that I think it is something that perhaps the AFL might look at.”
Hudson agreed with Wallace and said if you knew there was going to be a flurry of activity, as has been the case in previous years, having the end during primetime would make sense.
“It’s an interesting point,” he said.
“If you knew that you were going to get all those trades in that last four hours, which has certainly happened the last four years, hasn’t it, on the last day, you could somehow stretch it so the deadline is 830 at night and make an event out of it even more than it (currently) is.”
As revealed yesterday by Inside Football’s Brett Anderson, one idea which is currently being discussed to make events like the Draft more interesting is the introduction of trading picks and players live on draft night, possibly from as early as 2018.