Australian rules great Paul Roos says he is baffled by suggestions the AFL could potentially introduce an in-season tournament.<\/p>\n
The AFL is considering a tournament similar to the NBA Cup, with the idea floated in last week’s meeting between the CEOs of the league’s 19 clubs.<\/p>\n
The tournament would likely be introduced after Tasmania’s arrival in 2028, and the winner could stand to receive $5 million in prize money in addition to a guaranteed finals spot.<\/p>\n
AFL CEO Andrew Dillon confirmed in a statement last week that the potential in-season tournament was one of a number of ideas “with a focus on creating more content and marquee moments” during the season.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The NBA Cup has spiced up the league’s regular season, but Roos does not want a similar thing to happen in the AFL. (Getty Images: Ethan Miller)<\/p>\n
The NBA introduced its in-season tournament during the 2023\u201324 season as a way to add weight to regular-season games played in the early portion of the season, but Roos believes the AFL should steer clear of mimicking the world’s best basketball league.<\/p>\n
“If there’s a league you don’t want to follow in the world, it’s the NBA,” he told the ABC AFL Daily podcast.<\/p>\n
“The NBA ratings have absolutely plummeted. It is unwatchable now. I’m an ex-basketball player and a huge, huge basketball fan, I watched the NBA Finals and no other games at all.<\/p>\n
“They have destroyed their league by doing dumb stuff like play-in tournaments and mid-season games and changing rules offensively so you can’t touch anyone, scores are 150\u2013140, and you’ll see the ratings have reflected it.”<\/p>\n
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Roos, who currently resides in Hawaii, explained his dismay at the constant Americanisation of Australia’s leading sporting codes.<\/p>\n
“I just don’t understand Australian sports administrators’ fixation with American sport,” he said.<\/p>\n
“Living over here now, we do not want to go down the path of a lot of what America represents now [in terms of] sport.<\/p>\n
“It’s all about the individual, players changing clubs, it’s all about money and all about less time at the club and more time on holidays, and this is where we’re heading.<\/p>\n
“I don’t understand it. It’s not in my realm of thinking.”<\/p>\n
Roos was the captain of Fitzroy at a time when the club was bleeding money in the early 90s.<\/p>\n
However, he does not believe the league’s poorer clubs need the financial boost the in-season tournament could provide, like the Lions needed before their merger with the Brisbane Bears.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
AFL boss Andrew Dillon confirmed last week that the in-season tournament was one of a number of ideas floated to the league’s CEOs. (Getty Images: Darrian Traynor)<\/p>\n
“Even the $5 million, let’s be honest, the lower clubs are pumped up by the AFL anyway,” he said.<\/p>\n
“You’re not going out of business now if you’re an AFL club, so what’s $5 million?<\/p>\n
“Just be honest around what it’s for. What is the AFL trying to achieve?<\/p>\n
“We have a great competition, we have fans going to the game left, right and centre, we have ratings through the roof, so the game has never been in better shape.<\/p>\n
“Why do we want to change something that’s not broken just because we’ve got a three-game gap between ninth and 10th? Is that the reason? That’ll change next year.<\/p>\n
“I don’t know what the objective is, that’s the concern.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Australian rules great Paul Roos says he is baffled by suggestions the AFL could potentially introduce an in-season…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":48060,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40],"tags":[11128,36871,1260,36870,62,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-48059","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nba","8":"tag-afl","9":"tag-andrew-dillon","10":"tag-nba","11":"tag-paul-roos","12":"tag-sports","13":"tag-united-states","14":"tag-unitedstates","15":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114816347372422505","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48059","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=48059"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48059\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/48060"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=48059"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=48059"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=48059"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}