Flag favourites North Melbourne and the surprise packet of the season Fremantle are the only sides to remain undefeated at the conclusion of round three of the 2019 AFLW season. The Kangaroos continued to impress over the weekend and now sit on top of the heavily-weighted Conference A ladder with an intimidating percentage of 250.8, but the new conference system is already proving to be problematic with a clear divide between the two pools.
When the concept of conferences was first floated it was met with criticism and questions of fairness. AFL head of women’s football, Nicole Livingstone, said, “we recognise in having a seven-game home and away season not everyone will play each other once, so conferences allow for fairer ladders that reflect that”.
“Fair” is the term that appears to have been forgotten in the creation of the conferences. Advantages are now clearly based on the conference you are in and the sides you do not play in the regular season.
At the conclusion of round three, a combined ladder of Conference A and B provides a perfectly ordered, traditional ladder, signalling the strength of Conference A.
The AFL anticipated the conferences to be more even and the vast improvement of Fremantle has obviously added a complication to their split of the 10 teams. But when looking at Conference A, a group that consists of the reigning premiers, a new side bursting at the seams with stars, the 2017 premiers and a side who narrowly missed a spot in the grand final in the past two years, the conferences were off-balance from the outset.
The biggest concern raised over the weekend in regard to the strength of Conference A was how fair a finals series can be in this format.
The first ever AFLW finals series will see the two top teams in each conference qualify for a preliminary final spot. The top team in Conference A will host the second team in Conference B and vice versa.
Four rounds of the 2019 AFLW season remain and we could see some changes in competitiveness between the conferences, but at this stage, questions about the fairness the format provides need to be asked. It also raises concerns for the future of the competition when it expands in 2020 to include four new teams in St Kilda, the West Coast Eagles, Gold Coast Suns and Richmond.
If the term “fair” was the driving force for conferences, the definition of the term needs to be re-established because as it stands, it does not apply.
Livingstone also said that the AFL “landed on conferences because part of our mantra with AFLW is to be unique and innovative, and we believe this is part of that progress”.
What was pushed as an equaliser of the competition in the spirit of fairness, the conferences appear to be an exercise of convenience by the code’s administrators. Their existence implies that the women’s competition is set to stay in its “clean air” and short season format while it is continued to be experimented with for the purpose of innovation for innovation’s sake.
As we look towards 2020 and the entry of four more teams, a familiar feeling is setting in. It is the same feeling of misguided hope we had coming into 2019 that gave us two new sides and the anticipation of more women’s football, adequate finals and an equitable competition. It is the feeling that in ALFW, “fair” doesn’t mean what we want it to and compromise under the guise of being “unique and innovative” is what we are going to get.
