With Essendon, Hawthorn, Port Adelaide and Sydney set to be included in the 2023 AFLW season, all 18 AFL clubs will be represented in the women's competition.
Just this month the AFL finalised a new CBA for AFLW players which almost doubles player salaries and keeps the home-and-away season to 10 games per club.
With the August season start locked in and fast approaching, SEN's Gerard Whateley disagrees with the call to keep seasons short.
“From everything I’ve heard, the finances are now right… what’s required now is the vision,” he told SEN’S Crunch Time.
“The women’s competition has been dragged around.
“18 teams, 10 rounds… that’s an exhibition tournament not a competition… this doesn’t represent anything that would remotely look like an actual competition.”
Whateley proposed that with current CEO Gillon McLachlan stepping down, the new AFL boss needs to have a think about the future of the AFLW.
“The new chief executive of the AFL needs to devise, what does this look like in five years’ time? What does this look like in 10 years’ time?” he said.
“Once you’ve made the absolute commitment that the administration is done then it needs the visionary piece, so that the women know this is what our competition looks like.
“No one with a straight face could argue that 10 rounds is enough in an 18-team competition.
“You can’t really go this is a proper, adequate competition unless you actually structure it right.”
With the AFLW just months away from season seven, Port Adelaide great Kane Cornes suggested the league should only expand when there's sufficient demand.
“As long as there’s the demand for it, I think,” Cornes argued.
“If no one’s going to the games and if it’s not getting an audience on TV, do you want 18 rounds?
“It would be terrific for the players and the sport but it’s eventually there has to be a demand for that and I don’t know if there is that right now.
“More doesn’t make it better.”
The upcoming season of the AFLW will start on the last weekend of August this year.