The current fixture has 22 games a year for every club. This is a relic from the 1970s and 1980s when there were 12 teams and every team played each other twice. This was a balanced and fair fixture.

With 18 teams, the fixture is unbalanced. Each team plays five other teams twice and the other 12 teams only once. The choice of which five teams to play twice causes the fixture to be unbalanced. This has been managed by giving teams more games against teams of equal strength from the previous year, but this doesn't always work well.

One fair solution to this problem is for the AFL to abandon the idea of some teams playing other teams twice in the regular season and move to a shorter season with a simpler fixture where each team plays the other teams only once. This would still be slightly unbalanced because some teams would get nine home games a year and others only eight. We can resolve this by giving all teams eight home games, eight away games and one game a year that is played at a neutral venue such as Hobart or Cairns, or even overseas.

Such a fixture would have maybe 18 rounds, with three rounds in the middle of the season being the bye rounds. An alternative is to have one week in the middle of the year when the AFL plays no matches. This could be the grassroots weekend where the fans are encouraged to support local football. Players could make promotional appearances at local games, such as the local clubs they originally played for.

To make up for the reduction of football, additional competitions could be played. State of origin football could be restored. The pre-season competition could be expanded: one idea is to divide the teams into three groups of six, have each team play the five other teams once in their group then the top team and the best second-placed team advance to two weeks of knockout finals.

The first round of the fixture would be the ANZAC day weekend (The Saturday in the first round would fall on 23rd April to 29th April) with the Grand Final being on the last Saturday in September. There would be one mid-season bye per club and a week's break before the finals.

Should the AFL consider this or other ideas to remove the imbalance in the fixture?