Geelong superstar Patrick Dangerfield has debated his case of shortening games to extend out the AFL season.
The topic of how long games should last and how many games can be crammed into a season has been a hot topic in recent times, with the league returning to 20 minute quarters in 2021 after shortening during the previous year.
Adelaide’s new high-performance boss, Darren Burgess, recently offered his thoughts on the matter, saying the pre-season was “absolutely” too long, and called on the home and away season to be extended.
Dangerfield, co-hosting SEN Drive with Andy Maher and former Cat Josh Jenkins, was resolute in his idea that would “improve the competition.”
Read the full transcript of the conversation below, after Maher asked the Brownlow Medallist if he agrees with Burgess’ comments.
Dangerfield: “I’ve always been big on shortening the quarters, with the potential to lengthen the season. I get smashed on this all the time, but I’m not saying they’re 12-minute quarters, I think there’s a mark that we could hit, say around that 18-minute mark, 18 and a half minutes, that would then mean the quarters sit around the 27 minutes instead of 32.”
“What it would enable you to do is play more games, but also adjust your fixturing, because one of the biggest challenges at the moment is the five day breaks between games, and with the length of games at 130 odd minutes it’s a huge ask to ask teams to back up, so then it provides problems with the fixturing because you want the really good teams to play as often as you can in the really good timeslots, so you’ve got really competitive games and everyone loves watching those ones.”
“So, if you were able to reduce the game length, you could bring in more games, but you could also change the length in which teams need rest between them, and that would improve the competition I think, I don’t know what you think Josh.”
Jenkins: “Darren likes to talk a bit, (but) I actually agree with that. At the moment we train for five months, play for five months and have two months off, I don’t know if that’s really ideal.”
Maher: “When you put it like that, the 'train for' (aspect) feels too long.”
Dangerfield: “It’s fine for those that are healthy, 6-8 weeks no worries if you’re healthy, but for those that are coming back from injury, that’s the carrot for teams, get your list fit.
“But that will make it difficult, so you won’t have access to your Nat Fyfe’s if that’s the off-season, because you have one little hiccup with shoulder surgery or whatever it may be…”
Maher: “But we haven’t had that much access to Nat Fyfe under the current arrangement anyway in recent times. So, I take your point on board.”
Jenkins: “There was a lot of talk that three pre-season games are too many, so we went back to two or it might have been one this year.”
Dangerfield: “The pre-season, that’s finished now, I think.”
Jenkins: “But then the clubs are playing practice games against other clubs, in lieu of pre-season games that have been taken away.”
Dangerfield: “I reckon you can get straight into it.”
Jenkins: “I agree.”
Dangerfield: “Scrap your pre-season games.”
Maher: “Don’t even need them?”
Dangerfield: “Don’t need them. You bring that forward, you might get an extra three games there, depending on how you fixture it because you reduce the game length and you can have shorter breaks between those games, all of a sudden and without changing too much of the actual month-to-month length of the season, you might extend four or five games in.”
Jenkins: “The only problem is, (if a team drops out early) and they’ve still got 15 or 16 games left, there might be more games that are unwatchable.”
Maher: “That’s the fear.”
Dangerfield: “Roll the fixture then, like what they’ve done.”
Maher: “And hope that you get a season like what we got out of North Melbourne this season, where it didn’t start great and expectations were low (and they improved towards the end of the year).”
Jenkins: “I think no matter what, no matter what sport you’ve always got teams that aren’t very good.”
Maher: “Of course! In the American football today (Monday), Tennessee Titans have been beating everybody and they get beaten by the Houston Texans who are absolute rubbish.”
Dangerfield: “And that’s sport!”
Maher: “That’s sport! That’s exactly what happens.”