TOPIC:

Was brought to my attention chatting with a mate that the AFL season starts on the 6th of March this year. WAFL season starts April 5th. That's a month apart. Very strange. All those March 6 AFL matches are being played in Brisbane, GC and Sydney. Hot and very humid. Mind you I think 5th of April is too late to start the WAFL season. Should be a week earlier.

DD wrote:

Was brought to my attention chatting with a mate that the AFL season starts on the 6th of March this year. WAFL season starts April 5th. That's a month apart. Very strange. All those March 6 AFL matches are being played in Brisbane, GC and Sydney. Hot and very humid. Mind you I think 5th of April is too late to start the WAFL season. Should be a week earlier.

They brought in the opening round concept last year.  All games played in Queensland and NSW.  The AFL Season also starts 2 weeks earlier now.  This is because you have the opening round and then round one the next weekend.  Also, there is an extra round of fixtures for gather round.  The WAFL season started 3 weeks later than the AFL season did last year.

The WAFL season is only starting one week later than last year.  Last year we had 21 rounds, and it looks like there is only 20 rounds this year.   With the King's Birthday a week later this year the WAFL GF won't be on a long weekend.

DD wrote:

Was brought to my attention chatting with a mate that the AFL season starts on the 6th of March this year. WAFL season starts April 5th. That's a month apart. Very strange. All those March 6 AFL matches are being played in Brisbane, GC and Sydney. Hot and very humid. Mind you I think 5th of April is too late to start the WAFL season. Should be a week earlier.

It isn't much of a change from last season and doesn't create too many problems.
The Wafl pre-season games coincide with the start of the first full round so the Beagles and Dockers will be able to play players not required for afl gamesi n pre season wafl games.We don't need the Wafl season to start earlier as it would  create a unequal competition.

Starting earlier would mean another bye round in the middle of the year or it   would mean the comp would have to play 19-22 games instead of the 18 we currently play.Playing everybody twice is fair.
The clubs don't want it as it would increase costs and secondly it would mean some teams playing clubs twice and some three times and the grumbles will come out how the fixtures favours some teams and disadvantages others. 
 

Not much different to last year, biggest difference I can see is we have a late easter this year meaning the season doesn't start on or around the handy long break.

I prefer the later start as summer is lingering a lot longer now than it did in the 70s and 80s, it just too warm in March.

From a Subi & Ferals POV a later start is good as the new surface at Leedo will have that bit of extra time to bed in.

Senior Seagull wrote:

From a Subi & Ferals POV a later start is good as the new surface at Leedo will have that bit of extra time to bed in.

You would hope they are dumping water on it 3 times a day in this heat SS.

Yep all fully reticulated.