Rumours swirl about next Bachelor season

The latest season of The Bachelor is due to start filming within weeks, with a hunky sports presenter a favourite among fans to be given a rose.

Tony Armstrong has hosed down rumours he will be the next star of The Bachelor.

Bachelor season is about to get underway with filming set to start at the show’s new home on the Gold Coast within weeks.

Network Ten has made no secret of the fact the franchise needs revving up, in fact it needs to be turbo charged after losing market share in recent seasons.

Any new tricks could be tried.

The show’s companion offering, The Bachelorette, for example had sisters Elly and Becky Miles jointly looking for partners on the show in 2020.

Showing its progressive nature, The Bachelorette also had Brooke Blurton as its first Indigenous, first bisexual, leading lady last year.

The show on one occasion has even failed to find a partner for its eligible leading man with ‘Honey Badger’ Nick Cummins throwing his hands in the air and opting not to pick a partner from his final two suitors several years ago.

The Cummins experiment and the casting of Sophie Monk as The Bachelorette in 2017 saw the franchise embrace celebrity romance hunters. Both seasons delivered headlines.

Just who the elusive Bachelor is or what twists 10 has in store are still a mystery although rumours persist that sports presenter Tony Armstrong is a possibility.

Tony Armstrong (centre) played 35 AFL games for three different clubs.

Armstrong hosed down the idea in March describing it as a dumb rumour and his idea of a “living nightmare”.

“The dumbest one that is doing the rounds at the moment is that I’m doing The Bachelor. It is just not true but people who aren’t close friends but would have my number and stuff are buying into it,” he said.

“I hate that whole side of what I do so I can’t imagine having to go through what they go through on The Bachelor in front of Australia. That is my idea of a living nightmare.”

Armstrong presents sport on ABC News Breakfast, recently hosted the three-part series A Dog’s World for the ABC and regularly appears on The Project.

He played 35 games in an AFL career that spanned six years and three clubs.

Producers of The Bachelor have certainly been on the hunt to find a suave love seeker with an AFL connection in recent years.

It is understood former Hawthorn champion Josh Gibson, who has a young son with his partner Ashley Bright, was sounded out about the role several years ago but declined.

Alex Rance was also rumoured to have been approached.