While Opening Round is a hard sell in Melbourne, the season’s soft launch has merit

We've seen what Opening Round looks like, we know the starting point for the new AFL season. 

Opening Round is a hard sell in Melbourne, I understand that. It’s a soft launch that excludes the heartland.

It's a perfectly sound view that the start of a footy season should feature all 18 clubs and the prosecution could easily rest on that statement alone. 

But Opening Round is not for us, it's for the northern frontier to get their elbows out and compete with rugby league.

For years the AFL would get left in the gates as rugby league made the running a fortnight ahead. 

The message was consistent, Aussie Rules had to get into the marketplace earlier.

The first iteration certainly worked in New South Wales and Queensland, playing to full houses and generating some attention in the face of the NRL’s Las Vegas extravaganza. 

It didn't quite generate the ratings that I imagined it would, and the teams that hosted the first two games, well, they played in the Grand Final at the end of the longest season on record. So that part of it ended up smoothing out.

If the choice is to play four games on the Labour Day weekend or leave it vacant, I'll take the four games.

For a little while we were told that the AFL was certainly listening to the idea of the climax of the weekend being in Melbourne. - a Sunday blockbuster potentially at the MCG.

A lot of that swings on ground availability and it does diminish the idea that this is for the northern states, so that has held true at least for a second year.

The fixture has Brisbane meeting Geelong - they played probably the best game of 2024 didn't they, with the Preliminary Final? That gets reenacted. 

Sydney gets Hawthorn and the Hawks are prime time - we learned that in the back half of last year, so that's been harnessed straight away.

Gold Coast has Essendon and the Bombers traditionally are a big drawing team, so they're being pinned to the hopes of Gold Coast. 

Rather than a Saturday night, they've gone to a Sunday afternoon, which is a little bit curious in its own right with the Giants and Collingwood. 

They'll rely on the Magpie army to draw a crowd and they usually do. 

I'm sure Jeff Browne didn't want any part of Opening Round, but he's gone as President now and the Pies are there.

For it to fly, Collingwood was always going to have to be part of it.