The AFL confirmed the arrival of its newest format last week, announcing three AFL X tournaments would kick off the start of the 2018 pre-season.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
First thing’s first – what the hell is AFL X?
Well, let me put down my latte and put on my “I’m from Melbourne so know more than you about the AFL” hat (they’re like Make America Great Again hats but the font is a bit smaller and they’re slightly more obnoxious).
AFL X is trying to leapfrog on the back of T20 cricket and the somewhat less successful Fast4 Tennis formats in making a shorter, more exciting form of its game to make it more marketable to anyone who doesn’t already bleed AFL.
It’s a seven-a-side game designed to be played on rectangular soccer and rugby fields, and thus leapfrogging one of the biggest problems the indigenous game faces in tackling NSW and Queensland – namely all your fields are the wrong shape in winter.
(What do you people have against ovals anyway? They’re a perfectly cromulent shape.)
The format is being pushed as a “high octane” form of the sport, with a last touch rule being implemented for when the ball goes over the boundary and no marks paid for backward kicks.
There will also be a 10-point supergoal for goals kicked outside the 40-metre arc, which means yours truly would be half a chance of kicking one.
The ball will also be kicked back in after scores, meaning ruckmen are being subtly told to get in the bin, which is a message the AFL are arguable already pushing depending on your interpretation of 2017’s ruck rules.
So, why should anyone in Orange care?
While there’s no word on if AFL X will be trialled at local levels at all during 2018, let alone in the Central West, but it could be worth keeping an eye on.
It’s short, sharp and sweet and gives everyone a shot to have a try, and if it takes place on a weeknight, you’d think it’d attract people from other codes to give it a whirl before heading back to League or Union or soccer or whatever other crazy, heathen sports you people play up here.
And above all, I mean it looks fun.
Should other codes be concerned about the blatant and quite literal move onto their turf?
Not for a few years at least.
If the lukewarm reception to AFL 9s all across the country was anything to go by, AFL X needs to be something special to make headway into League heartland.
Besides, AFL X may well represent AFL CEO Gillion McLachlan’s “dig up, stupid” moment in the race to the bottom of commercialising Australia’s greatest sport, where he pushes the cash cow too far.
There’s nothing us AFL fanatics hate more than someone trying to make a quick buck by ripping the guts out of the country’s greatest sport.