Recruiting zones haven’t been a thing for over thirty years. Do you mean supporters?
I think having tasmania as an 18th licence will be good. If you have 19 teams in a competition, then there will be more byes every round. I don’t want Gold Coast to relocate to Tasmania (as hopefully they can maintain their stability) but I do think that St Kilda should relocate to Tasmania. St Kilda’s home crowd had very lower than usual figures. St Kilda has recorded losses.
Yes Supporters.
I don’t think that is true at all. Why would the AFL give the Sydney sides the extra cost of living allowance? The AFL needs a Sydney side to succeed each year to keep the competition truly national. Its the one market the AFL is desperate to get into.
The only issue is St Kilda has done no work in Tasmania unlike North and Hawthorn. A move to Tasmania will never happen for St Kilda and probably never should. And IMO I don’t think just relocating teams is the right move either. I would much rather them build new teams.
I also don’t think they should have 19 teams and I also think 18 is the max they should have in the competition.
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Yep, I agree.
The Swans and/or Giants playing finals football (or at the absolute worst, just missing out) every year is almost essential if the AFL is to maintain any level of relevance here in the traditionally rugby league-loving market of Sydney. A similar philosophy can be applied to the NRL and the Melbourne Storm, I think.
St Kilda have played a few games in Tasmania a long time ago and were a big advantage. They stopped playing in Tasmania in late 2006. What I am implying is that the crowd numbers for St Kilda home games were low. In 2017, they finished 11th and last year they finished 16th. The membership numbers hit a new high in 2018, but have taken a hit this year. If membership numbers continue to dwindle what’s going to happen.
And also Hawthorn’s contract to playing home games in Launceston expires in 2021. In 2022, I think hawthorn should Have 11 home games at both MCG + Etihad stadium.
If I’m correct don’t Hawthorn make quite a bit of money out of their Tasmania games? They also have the opportunity to sell memberships to Tasmanians for those games down there, and they have a fantastic winning record in the Apple Isle
Interesting to note both the Fast Train and a Tasmanian AFL Team have been in the news this week as potential future things. I’m almost tempted to take a book on which one happens first. Or if either happens in my lifetime…
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I think that’s why the AFL don’t want a team in Tasmania. It’s super profitable for the Victorian clubs that offer matches there already.
Yes- they can’t have it both ways. There would still be some who would like nothing more than to see Sydney return to Albert Park, though. The living allowance has been a sticking point for many in the Establishment such as Eddie McGuire. The quid pro quo may be to let Sydney get as far as the finals but make it very difficult to win a flag. Witness the free count in the 2016 GF which was the last straw for me and I’ve hardly watched a Sydney game since.
I think for a ‘truly national’ competition there has to be a Tasmanian side, period. Tassie has a rich AFL history but obviously not enough revenue for the bean counters. The Hawthorn-Launceston connection is a good one from what I’ve seen, but games in Hobart seem to be less well attended. Has any side committed to playing regularly down there, though?
But as I said I think you can’t look at the free kick count as the afl having it out for Sydney. And the free kick count was worse for Adelaide and the bulldogs in that season. Sydney didn’t lose the GF because they had less free kicks. They were simply out played.
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Bulldogs were +112 in 2016! That stands out like a sore thumb, I’m sorry. Adelaide were also +33 so a little better than even.
Sydney? -50 in 2016.
And yes, the count isn’t the whole story- to really get a picture you’d have to look at it closely, whether the frees affected the game or not, etc.
The free kick distribution for Sydney (and West Coast) does not follow a normal distribution. Something is fishy here.
I just think it’s their game style. If you have a problem with it perhaps write to the club haha
As I said before, this might account for a bit of the anomaly but not the whole thing. The negative anomaly was worst in the period 2005-2007 when the high intensity defence strategy was used the most but has still persisted almost year after year. Not a random walk.
To test this properly, you’d have to get one of the other clubs (preferably an Establishment team) playing exactly like the Swans did in 2005-2007.
I guess you could argue hawthorn did have a similar style and from the table you posted they too have a similar differential.
Same could be said for Richmond in their premiership year. They were very defensive and had a deficit that year as well.
I don’t really know what the issue is when your club wins more games than loses them and makes the finals most years.
They also had Buddy Franklin… but the difference between Sydney and Hawthorn is still significant (168 frees/15 years). The difference between West Coast (+919) and Sydney (-516) is a whopping 1435 frees/15 years!
Free kicks should, in the long run, approach a normal distribution, with anomalies between teams decreasing. I think over this timescale the differences in strategy etc. should even themselves out (though 30 years+ would be better).
If they do not even themselves out over time, there can only be one conclusion: systemic bias in umpiring.
But you can’t just give frees to even out the game. If they are there they are there. If they are not they’re not. As I said it hasn’t stopped Sydney from winning games and being successful. I would rather have my team give away more frees and win than the other way around.
Of course, though this doesn’t change the fact that in the very long run, differences between sides should approach zero.
This is going round in circles a bit so I’ll drop it for now. I doubt if anyone has a data set going all the way back to 1982 when Sydney “joined” the competition. At least 50 years of data should be collected for a robust statistical analysis. I’ll try to record the free kick count for each game from now on… and hope I’m still around in 2069 to analyse the results 
. ****
***If footy is still around, of course.
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What came to mind was that the 2016 AFL Grand Final was panned with umpired giving away more free kicks to Western Bulldogs that resulted them in winning the premiership. John Longmire, coach of the Sydney Swans was not happy about the free kicks being given to Western Bulldogs and believed it was rigged.
On the way home from the Port game I saw the Sydney players catching a coach to the game from the hotel near the 10 studios. Thought it was a strange place for them to be staying.
Port Adelaide played a really good game. Really didn’t expect them to win. Good to see them take the game on again. Lots of improvement although it’s only round 1 and it’s a bit early to be booking grand final tickets.
Melbourne started off well but in the final quarter, they froze and didn’t score anything. Possibly has to do with the absence of Steven May where he was suspended for one match in the Pre game for striking Brisbane’s Jarrod Berry.