AFL

What if the AFL extended the wildcard concept to the entire competition?

You could turn the end of the season into a knockout ladder based entirely on finishing position.

The postseason would work like this:

• 15 plays 18 and 16 plays 17.

• The winners play 13 and 14.

• Those winners play 11 and 12.

• Then 9 and 10.

• Then 7 and 8.

• The final two survivors join the top six in the normal finals series.

To make room for those extra weekends without extending the season, the home-and-away season would drop to 20 rounds.

There are 18 clubs, so every club would play all 17 opponents once, plus three opponents a second time.

No byes.

Nine games every weekend.

Twenty games per club.

That gives 180 home-and-away games, followed by nine weekends of postseason football.

Total season length: 29 weekends, the same as now.

The ladder would still matter enormously. Finish in the top six and you skip five knockout weekends. Finish 18th and you can still theoretically win the premiership, but you have to survive the entire finals series.