Carlton Supporters Club

The club now appears likely to move to a standalone VFL side when state-leagues resume competition, which is not expected until May 31 at the earliest.

Supported Preston in the VFA so a pity to see them now cease to exist. Anyway, Carlton is a pretty good replacement!

Rumors of lots of stuff going down behind the scenes, it looks like this interruption is going to be the catalyst or excuse for all sorts of changes to the game whether we like them or not, maybe it will be quite an unfamiliar game when it returns at least in the way it's managed, coached and traded.

Seems a lot of it isn't just about COVID-19 but the AFLs desire to reduce the costs of being an AFL club making them all more profitable. One thing is players might get their wish for the shorter games they have been pushing for, but at significantly lower wage.

My dad always said, be careful what you wish for!

Other things being floated, extended lists, reserves/unders competition(Shorter games with a curtain raiser!), more player trades, reduced coaches/runners/trainers, sub-contract players or even full free agency, etc., etc..

It sounds like some clubs are asking for a setup that allows players to be freely traded from lower leagues into the AFL mid-season, whenever, like a feeder competition that is outside the draft. In much the same way Premier League team might freely trade for a player from a lower division.

There are rumors that two Melbourne club's are borderline on going to the wall, to potentially be relocated to Tassie and NT.

One of the most radical proposals relates to the draw, they are talking about clustering fixtures so that when club's travel interstate they complete a host of games before returning to greatly reduce travel. To do this the AFL has to commit to decentralized / shared facilities. For example we go to Perth, stay there and play Freo and Wet Toast in consecutive rounds then return. Apparently this slashes the amount of overall travel.

I wonder how badly we are hurting given that Pokies, even if they eventually re-open, are now as palatable as toxic waste dumps?

Ditto, nothing like watching Len Clark, Peter Weightman, David Dickson etc doing their thing in Red...as NavyM  suggested this might lead to something better long term and I have always been a fan of a standalone Blues lineup in the VFL.
Bit sad to see Fraser and other's lose jobs, these are tough times and hope they can find some other footy employment when things settle.

One of a raft of changes coming up due to the CV crisis, list numbers, coaching numbers (soft cap reduction), admin staff numbers (recruiting will be one of the hardest hit). As for the game, the 16 min qtrs will be here to stay. 

In my opinion that is going to have a huge effect on drafting and team tactics, slower players, guys who battle on with strength, power and endurance are going to be greatly disadvantaged. These are guys who regularly come good towards the end of quarters like Cripps and Pendlebury.

Its a return to the good old days (thank fark). Was listening to Ross Lyon talk about a recent coaching experience, he talked about when he coached the International Rules team, he said there was him, Clarkson (I think) and one ther coach and one IT guy. Thats it. He reckons they all commented about how much purer it was. Know I bet you will all moan and groan but I 110% agree with this. All we have done is copied the NFL (utterly crape game for mine) model for coaching numbers, the game is none the better IMHO.

As for drafting players with big tanks, atheletic abilities but cant kick a footy to save themselves, we are a prime example of this.