One's trash is another's treasure in the AFL footy fixture debate

As if their pride hasn't already been jolted sufficiently, they discover upon arrival a billboard which lists the band as playing second fiddle to a puppet show.

"Oh no, if I told them once I told them 100 times to put Spinal Tap first and puppet show last," says their indignant manager.

That's a little how the release of the AFL fixture feels sometimes these days, or at least Part II of it, with dates and times for Rounds 16-23 announced on Tuesday.

It's all about the spots on the bill.

Essendon's good form has been rewarded with three games in the prized Friday night time slot.

"The Bombers are so hot right now," you can almost hear the league's marketing people lobbying football department types doing the scheduling.

Richmond, meanwhile, is coming across a little like Spinal Tap. The old hits are losing their lustre.

The fans aren't buying the new stuff. And the networks have moved on to shinier, sexier toys.

The three home games in the Round 16-23 block of fixtures see the Tigers scheduled for the 3.20pm Sunday afternoon slot.

Yep, that's the contemporary fixturing equivalent of playing support act to a puppet show.

Richmond will be considered by the game's cognoscenti a big loser out of the release, purely from the perspective of TV ratings and audiences.

Ironically, though, it could actually win the Tigers some brownie points with their most dedicated supporters, ie. those who turn up in the flesh each week.

The fact all Richmond's Melbourne games in this new batch will be played on either a Saturday or Sunday afternoon could be music to the ears of some of the Tigers' more family-inclined fans with young children, for whom the commercially-preferable marquee Friday or Thursday night slots simply aren't practical.

And that's something which not just the fixturing people at the AFL, but plenty of football industry "insiders" like club officials, not to mention fortunate media representatives, might do well to remember from time to time.

As the fixture becomes more and more geared towards the TV audience than the live spectator, finer becomes the line between satisfying both markets to at least a reasonable extent and avoiding turning the sport into more of an "entertainment", where the first viewing option instinctively becomes watching on a television screen.

If you think live audiences don't count anymore, remember just how flat even the best games fell during the Covid years, when so many games were played in literally empty stadiums.

Thankfully, that was only temporary.

But if we were to keep tilting that delicate balance away from those who attend towards those watching on the couch, who knows how many footy fans of the future would bother ever actually going?

And who is to say a product devoid of live atmosphere remains as attractive a proposition to potential sponsors.

Sometimes I worry there's far fewer voices loud enough to champion the cause of those who prefer the outer to the loungeroom to digest their football.

And that those with the potential to influence decision-making at the game's coalface are more guilty of a certain tone deafness.

In the last week or so we've had some commentators bemoaning the fact rank and file football fans want sufficient warning with the fixture to be able to plan their match-going, particularly games outside their own home state.

The suggestion that fans were simply "going to have to adapt because this is the way that sport is going" went down with the punters about as well as did Marie Antoinette's "let them eat cake" line to the French peasantry in the 18th century.

Others have been irritated by the AFL calling stumps on Thursday night football for the season after Round 13.

And while it's true that Thursdays in terms of live and TV audiences so far this year have been neck and neck with the Friday numbers, that has been early in the season with warmer weather, some school holidays thrown in, and most teams still with some glimmer of hope.

Presuming the fans are going to just keep turning out midweek when the winter freeze sets in and their teams are down the bottom facing another 10-goal thumping with an early start the next morning and kids to get to school is perhaps a little naive.

Or indeed coming from those who have easy and free access to a workplace which is a footy ground on a Thursday night and who can have a lay in the next morning.

The other significant point to be made is how even the Thursday night football we've enjoyed so far in 2024 has taken away from the fare on either Saturday or Sunday.

Those are still timeslots, which, heaven forbid, many more traditionally-inclined footy fans still prefer, and on several weekends already this season they've been humdrum to say the least.

That's the thing about the fixture. What is one interest group's blockbuster may be another's dud.

Or should that be puppet show support act?

Whatever, it's something of which the AFL must never lose sight, no matter how "flexible and agile" as Gil McLachlan famously put it, the league wants to be when it comes to the games schedule.