AFL CEO Gillon McLachlan has explained the thought process behind keeping the Grand Final at the MCG.
Despite some unrest amongst interstate clubs who find it unfair that the Grand Final isn’t shared around, the AFL and Andrews Government have struck a deal that sees the league’s biggest match played at the MCG until 2057.
McLachlan says the magnitude of the event means you simply can’t share it around and wait to see who the host team is.
“This is such a big event, one of the biggest events in the world, you need to be planning a year or two out,” he told SEN.
“Once you do that, you can’t have the Grand Final going to the top ranked team because you need to know where you’re playing the Grand Final from a long way out.
“We are committed to the MCG, it’s been here for 100 years, it holds 100,000 people and we get the most amount of people coming to it and you feel it’s the home of our Grand Final.
“If you take Adelaide, the challenge of that is you might have the two Brisbane teams playing each other in Adelaide and you have got a restricted capacity of 50,000.
“So 50,000 less people can go and you don’t get the home team playing their Grand Final.
“We have gone for a model where we maximise the crowd.
“The MCG has been the home of the Grand Final for so long and that’s what we have committed to.”
McLachlan also confirmed it’s a guaranteed deal, meaning it’ll be implemented regardless if the Andrews Government loses power.
The CEO said a decision on a twilight Grand Final will come at the end of the month, while he acknowledged some clubs may continue to keep a best of three Grand Final series on the agenda.
