We believe in it: AFLW boss Nicole Livingstone defends the competition’s conference system

The AFL’s head of women’s football Nicole Livingstone acknowledges the AFLW’s conference system does look “a little different”, but stands by it as the best thing for the competition.

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WITH three rounds of AFLW now complete, the lopsided nature of the competition’s conference system — where the top five sides overall are stacked together in Conference A, including Adelaide — is coming under attack.

AFL’s head of women's football Nicole Livingstone speaks during the 2019 AFLW launch in Port Melbourne. Picture: Daniel Pockett/AAP

Critics are concerned that despite the competition being the best yet in terms of scoring and skills, that because the top two sides from each conference play in finals, the best teams overall won’t qualify.

But the AFL’s head of women’s football Nicole Livingstone is sticking by the system.

“We believe in the conference system,” she said on Monday.

“We acknowledge that at the moment at round three that the conferences do look a little different but they are separate conferences and separate ladders.

“Unfortunately because people are used to seeing an AFL ladder being one ladder, they are merging them together. So we just need to remind people that they are two separate ladders in two separate conferences and there is quite a battle going on in those conferences to get to the top two positions.

“We think that in the last four rounds there will be some changes in the way it looks given that we’ve got a lot of in-conference games, so where we are at round three is potentially not where we’ll be at round seven.”

Livingstone said none of the 10 AFLW clubs had expressed any concerns to her.

Crows head of football operations Phil Harper said the club wouldn’t be making judgment on the new system before the end of the season.

“We are open to new and innovative ideas and we will wait until the season plays out before judging it,” he said.

“Right now, we just have to win games of football to make sure it isn’t a problem for us.”

But while Livingstone supported the system, she left the door open for future changes to how the conferences are determined.

AFL head of women’s football, Nicole Livingstone, from left, with 2019’s AFLW captains (L-R back): Melissa Hickey, Leah Kaslar, Elise O'Dea, Kara Donnellan, Bri Davey (L-R middle): Chelsea Randall, Steph Chiocci, Amanda Farrugia, Emma Kearney (L-R front): Ellie Blackburn. Picture: Daniel Pockett/AAP

For the 2019 season, the AFL used final ladder positions from last season to determine the conferences.

“Obviously we’ll review that like we do with everything at the end of the season to see whether or not basing it off the finishing positions from the year before is the right thing to do given that we’ve got four new teams coming in, in 2020.

“If you look at last year: Fremantle finished seventh in 2018 and they are now sitting undefeated slotted in behind North Melbourne.

“And if somebody had asked me at the beginning of this year would you get to round three and the Brisbane Lions had won one and GWS hadn’t won a game, I’d probably have said: ‘You’re joking right?’.

“It’s also some teams underperforming and (Brisbane coach) Craig Starcevich has been quite open about that, that he needs to see a lift in performance and I’m sure (GWS coach) Alan McConnell would say the same things as well.”

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