AFL grand final may be tied to MCG but venue tradition is outdated

It is the afternoon of 24 October. The 2020 AFL grand final has just been played at the Gabba. Brisbane Lions players and staff are celebrating in the most socially distant way they can after toppling Richmond to break a premiership drought of 17 years. The season somehow found a way. All is right with the world.

Or is it? Critics and curmudgeons are pointing to the fact that Brisbane might well be a very good team, but were given an almighty leg-up by dint of home-ground advantage. How might they have fared if the decider was played at the MCG? In the year of the asterisk, this triumph gets double-starred.

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Covid-19 has taken many things from us, but in the AFL it has given us a forced glimpse into a parallel universe where the grand final is not hosted at the MCG as a matter of right. This year, the decider will be played outside of Victoria for the first time since Fitzroy beat Essendon in the VFL’s first grannie in 1898. Assuming the state gets on top of the pandemic in the following 12 months, the grand final will return to the MCG in 2021 – and there it will stay until at least 2057. But the debate will not quieten.

Those who argue the grand final should be shared around, and there are many, point to fairness for interstate teams and the benefits of growing the game outside of the stronghold of Victoria. Those who insist on the MCG as the fixture’s rightful home for time immemorial point to tradition; they would likely be the same voices who would seek to cheapen a Lions grand final win at the Gabba on the grounds Brisbane sneaked one in at home.

This tradition that many Victorians cling to is outdated. It is a VFL tradition, not an AFL tradition. Prior to the game apparently going national in 1990, when suburban grounds were still in vogue, the MCG made perfect sense as a (mostly) neutral grand final venue. But the age of centralisation has brought with it a gross imbalance; playing the AFL grand final at a ground home to several Melbourne clubs should be considered the biggest single impediment to non-Victorian teams winning a flag.

Of course, interstate teams are not unaccustomed to winning AFL premierships. Since 2003, however, just five non-Victorian teams have won the grand final; three of these victories were achieved against fellow interstaters. In the same period, seven residents of the MCG have been crowned premiers to go with four more from Victorian clubs who call elsewhere home. Perhaps these sides were simply better than the rest. Perhaps not.

Richmond have unarguably been the team of the past few seasons, but their charge to premiership success in 2017 and 2019 cannot escape the magnifying glass. In 2017 the Tigers did not leave the MCG for the duration of the finals series, even hosting Geelong in a qualifying final despite the Cats finishing higher on the ladder. In 2019 their run was even more charmed, playing seven consecutive games at the MCG leading into the finals series. These facts should not be regarded as footnotes or trivialities of detail, nor as moans from the margins; they are determinants which can directly affect the outcome of matches and seasons.

The fact of the matter is no team should be afforded the luxury of home-ground advantage in a grand final. The very concept is manifestly unfair. The AFL grand final should be shared around the country, by tender process or allocation, to the venues that meet standard requirements. Adelaide Oval, ANZ Stadium, the Gabba, Optus Stadium – these are grounds perfectly capable of hosting an AFL grand final.

The argument that the MCG has the largest capacity, and should therefore have exclusive rights to the grand final, holds little water. The big dance is ostensibly a TV event, its reach nationally and internationally far outstripping the “extra value” the tens of thousands MCG members and junketing corporates provide on the day. The MCG might be the finest stadium in the land and, yes, those jib sweeps of a packed concourse are lovely. But there is a bigger picture to consider. Could it be imagined that the Super Bowl is played every year at Gillette Stadium, the FA Cup final at Anfield or the Champions League final at the Camp Nou? No, because these competitions look outward, not inward.

For now, and for decades to come, the entire discussion is moot. AFL chief executives have become dab hands at playing a straight bat over the years and Gillon McLachlan was at it again last week. “The grand final is at the MCG until there are circumstances and reasons that mean it can’t be,” he said, stating no more than fact. No boss of the AFL wants to be remembered in history, in Victoria at least, as the one who took the grand final away from the MCG. One day, however, that honour will belong to someone.

Rather than an act to be reviled, when it does happen it should be hailed a stroke of vision and common sense. And time is something the AFL has on its side. It has 38 years to finally get it right. Come 2058, the grand final must be moved around the country. Then, 68 years after the fact, the AFL will truly be a national competition.