AFL premiership coach Mick Malthouse has doubled down on his comments suggesting the results of Round 1 should be ignored and the season restarted when it resumes later in the year, given the COVID-19 situation.
Malthouse’s position received criticism from Kane Cornes who called it “the biggest joke he’d heard”.
The former Collingwood coach joined Cornes on SEN SA Breakfast to explain his point.
“I just thought that because Round 1 and Round 2 are going to be separated by such a vast day difference, I can’t get my head around that it counts,” Malthouse said.
“I’m looking forward to the football starting and I don’t want to take any supplements over from Round 1 and I’m just trying to get my head around the changes that will take place.
“If we go into Round 1 with maybe 17 games and nine teams are going in behind the 8-ball because they’ve already lost one game and they’ll have to win 60 per cent of their remaining games to make the eight, if there’s an eight.
“I understand totally that there’s nine sides that will say they won the game and were ready to go and this is an opinion, it’s just as easy to say let’s keep going, but I would say the last four games of that first round, those teams all knew that this was the last game to be played for a number of months.
“The West Coast and Melbourne game was a practice match in all honesty, if you looked at the game it lacked intensity.
“Both teams went down that race knowing they weren’t going to play next week, whereas the Thursday and Friday nights there were still hints that we were going to have a Round 2 next week.
“The intensity of the first couple of games compared to the last couple was extreme.”
Malthouse would also prefer see the 2020 season sacrificed if it goes too deep into the year, saying it should not allowed to compromise 2021.
“I’d hate to see 2021 interfered with by 2020. If it means that 2020 becomes a showcase of our game, you don’t want two years to be buggered up,” he told SEN SA Breakfast.
“One is bad enough. Let’s not muck up the second one as well. By going into December, what sides are going to be ready by March next year?
“There’s a lot of things to think about.”