The AFL is prepared to delay the start of games this year if matches continue to run overtime.
The pre-season score-fest, combined with 50-second breaks between goals, has presented a potential dilemma for the AFL’s tight Saturday schedule.
Typically, there is a 2 hour and 50 minute gap between the two Saturday afternoon games. The league and broadcasters don’t want those games to overlap.
Sunday’s Brisbane Lions-Gold Coast community series game ran for 2 hours and 50 minutes, including all breaks. The 34-goal St Kilda-Carlton contest ran for 2 hours and 46 minutes.
In 2019, a game would typically run from anywhere between 2hr38min-2hr42min, siren to siren.
In Round 1 next week, the AFL will push back the Adelaide-Geelong game at the Adelaide Oval if the preceding 1:45pm Melbourne-Fremantle clash follows a similar trend to the pre-season.
And if the new rules and the return of 20-minute quarters prompt a sustained swing back to more offensive football and longer games, the league will formally amend the fixture when it comes to start times.
But the AFL is confident it won’t get to that. The league believes last weekend’s relative glut of goals will not continue and defensive football will re-emerge once four points are on the line.
It remains a watching brief for the AFL’s football department as debate again rages about the length of games and the breaks between goals.
The AFL extended the breaks between goals last season from 45 seconds to a minute for broadcast reasons given quarters were cut to 16 minutes.
But when the AFL Commission voted to return games to full 20-minute quarters this year, they only cut the goal breaks back to 50 seconds.
The league had been considering 18-minute quarters.