Tony Cochrane has taken aim at the AFL for their decision to return to a traditional day-time Grand Final timeslot.
The 2020 Grand Final took place at night at the Gabba as part of what was a tumultuous year.
Cochrane was one of the architects of the change and has labelled the call to return to a traditional slot “a VFL decision”.
“There’s a lot of people in our AFL that conveniently forget they’re the AFL and slide back into the VFL and it was ‘what the fans in Victoria need is the certainty of it being in the afternoon’,” the Gold Coast boss told Sportsday SA.
“Gosh, haven’t we got past that? What are we 35 years into the AFL?
“I was really disappointed. I thought it was a p-ss-poor decision. We had a great opportunity.
“We blew every event in Australia off the map in terms of TV ratings, Channel Seven was over the moon, everyone was over the moon with the ratings we achieved and I thought, right, we’ve set it up now, I didn’t think it would go to night time I thought that was a step too far, but I was sure it would go to twilight.
“Half-time would be in darkness and they’d be able to do an entertainment piece, we’d be done by 8:30pm and people would be able to go out for dinner afterwards or put the kids to bed or go and get a drink.
“I thought it was a great compromise by going to twilight and they wimped out on me and I haven’t missed anybody telling them that I think it’s a massive mistake.”
From an on-field standpoint, Cochrane is frustrated that his Suns haven’t had any luck from an injury point of view.
Gold Coast lost both Sam Day and Connor Budarick to serious knee injuries during their Round 2 victory over North Melbourne.
“They’re enormous outs. We can’t take a trick,” Cochrane said.
“Matt Rowell is probably still the best part of eight weeks away, Sam Day is more tricky than we thought, we were hoping he would be maybe four or five weeks, but it’s looking longer than that.
“Poor old Connor’s done an ACL so he’s out for a year. We’ve had just a shocking run of injuries to start the season.
“We’ve got six guys in rehab and every one of them has a knee issue.”
The Suns take on Adelaide as part of Good Friday at the Adelaide Oval.
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