I’m a big fan of the new Final Ten. I want to acknowledge this, because when the AFL gets something wrong, I’m right there, ready to tip the bucket. But I like the Final Ten a lot.
- The Final Ten is a lot like the Final Eight, plus a special introductory fun extra week. When I heard the AFL wanted to rejigger the finals system, I had concerns. Because the Final Eight is fantastic. I thought the AFL would do that thing where they change a thing and then it turns out that thing doesn’t work in practice quite like they thought and now it needs another thing, and then another, until it’s hard to see how the end result is substantially better than the original problem that allegedly needed fixing. There are many bad finals systems around, but the Final Eight isn’t one of them. It avoids dead rubbers; it effectively rewards teams for Home & Away achievements without tilting the balance too far; it offers a series of matches between closely-matched teams; it lets fans know what their teams are playing for before they play for it. Terrific stuff. I’m glad we kept all that.
- It is genuinely more interesting for low-mid-table teams. The knock, of course, was that letting 9th and 10th into finals — excuse me, into “wildcard finals;” more on the naming scheme later — would devalue the whole thing. But we were already scoffing at 7th and 8th, saying they were just making up the numbers, so extending that to 9th and 10th is no real difference. In return, we give teams around 10-13th something to play for late in the season. Sure, it’s the chance to make a I-can’t-believe-it’s-not-really-butter final, and winning that will only offer the opportunity to be beaten by better teams later — but we’re delusional football fans; we will believe anything is possible. And if it’s not, well, our team is still alive while other teams’ seasons are over. That’s exciting all by itself, and worth achieving, so it grants meaning to what would otherwise be dead rubber late-season games.
- We had to do something about the pre-finals bye. It was a terrible lull just when the season should be building to a climax. At least now there are two games of football in it.
Obviously the naming is stupid. They’re “wildcard” finals even though they have no apparent connection to wildcards, and the AFL is trying to claim simultaneously they’re finals but not part of “the finals.” The official AFL ladder now has a dividing line between the Top Ten and the rest, but also a special line after the Top Six, apparently to show those teams have the benefit of no knockout final first-up — even though the Top Four have the exact same benefit relative to the teams below them via the double chance, but they don’t get a line.
But the system! The system is good.