Jon Ralph: Opening Round fiasco latest hit in AFL’s pre-season of pain

A season with so much on the line looms for the AFL as it ventures into its new TV rights deal, and the pre-season could not have gone much worse for the juggernaut, writes JON RALPH.

NRL supremo Peter V’landys would be chuckling into his glass of Moet in his first class seat back from Sin City after Rugby League’s Las Vegas jaunt.

The four-match NRL schedule might have failed to reach the heights of its inaugural season but at least it went ahead uninterrupted.

On Tuesday the AFL’s running bid to hijack the NRL’s early rounds with Opening Round was washed away in a sea of indecision as Cyclone Alfred torpedoed the league’s early-season northern experiment.

AFL’s Opening Round is in tatters. Picture: Darrian Traynor/AFL Photos/via Getty Images

A season with so much on the line as Fox Footy and Seven start a $4.5 billion TV rights deal is running into some early headwinds that Andrew Dillon and his team would hope they can punch through as soon as the season starts.

Finally on Tuesday afternoon the AFL postponed both the Brisbane-Geelong and Gold Coast-Essendon games, a day after Andrew Dillon had suggested the league might wait until game day to make a call on the Lions-Cats contest.

Dillon was desperate not to get ahead of any government advice and yet it made the AFL look heartless to consider a decision so late when they were actually doing everything in their power to follow government advice.

To make decisions only following official government guidelines.

He pointedly made it crystal clear on Monday the AFL would never do anything to compromise health and safety in Queensland.

And yet his indecision and that potential Thursday timeline allowed the AFL to be painted as lacking empathy.

As with his call last year about the AFL’s umpiring standards being as good as they had ever been, he unwittingly walked into a controversy instead of studiously avoiding an AFL own goal.

The planned season opener has been postponed. Picture: Quinn Rooney/Getty Images

Ironically Gillon McLachlan did everything he could through Covid to get AHEAD of government decisions but he swanned through on sheer charisma and was credited with saving football.

If Dillon’s first season in charge was highlighted by solid but unspectacular leadership he could stand behind the phenomenal standard of football, record attendances and memberships.

The AFL could boast about the highest scores in seven seasons, about one in five games decided by under a goal, about one in three games featuring upsets, about 400 million hours of sport being watched in 2024 (40 per cent more than the NRL).

Yet this summer has rarely gone to plan apart from the strong Indigenous All Star game.

Already in the space of two pre-season games we have seen a spate of the AFL’s stars and most marketable players go down injured.

Marcus Bontempelli is out for two months, Errol Gulden for three months, GWS drawcard Jake Stringer is out with a hamstring, Jamarra Ugle-Hagan is back who knows when.

Jesse Hogan’s broken thumb after slamming it in a door might have been a metaphor for the AFL’s season lead-in.

The Indigenous All Stars game was a rare pre-season highlight for the AFL. Picture: Michael Willson/AFL Photos via Getty Images

The AFL knew Richmond would be terrible but would be terrified St Kilda might join them as an easybeat to turn a second game of the round into a one-sided contest more often than not.

The AFL’s own agenda with club presidents and CEOs on Tuesday was littered with thorny issues – twin class actions against the AFL (racism and concussion), the Tasmanian team which might or might be a money pit.

The AFL and AFLPA are warring over drugs, over the criteria for the injury and hardship fund, over a player welfare review after Christian Petracca’s King’s Birthday injury.

For all the traditionalists who rail against the opening round, the bottom line is that was an unrivalled success last year.

Four sold-out games, intense focus on the northern markets, big membership rises for those four clubs, then a huge round 1 crowd.

Not just huge, but an AFL record as 413,405 fans packed stadiums across the country.

How can anyone argue against those numbers?

Yet the second incarnation sees only two AFL games spread across Friday and Sunday, before a Richmond-Carlton Thursday night clash likely to be the most one-sided clash since the Blues torched the Tigers by 56 points in 2010.

The AFL is Australia’s version of the cane toad – close to indestructible.

It has got through covid, through the Essendon drugs saga, through the Hawthorn racism saga.

It will survive a rocky start to 2025 but as Dillon tries to avoid his own second-year blues he will heave a mighty sigh of relief when that ball is finally thumped into the turf to start the AFL season.