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ESSENDON and Melbourne are set to take center stage in the much-anticipated AFL 2019 home-and-away season.
The league is desperate to bring back the excitement of Friday night football in the blockbuster timeslot proved fizzers last season.
First West Coast and beaten great finalist Collingwood will be rightfully seeing plenty of prime time action in 2019, but fixturing chief Travis Auld is also a fan of the brand of the Bombers and Demons played this year.
"We want to bolster Friday nights, we want to make sure that Thursday and Fridays are really strong," Auld said.
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"We want to reward teams who have been playing really good football.
"West Coast and Collingwood are the two obvious ones but Melbourne and Essendon look quite exciting after trade period.
"So we want to feature them in the right spots as often as we can."
The league has enjoyed some success with a limited liability.
The AFL has already released the round one schedule, the season starting with the now-annual Thursday night Richmond-Carlton clash at the MCG.
The struggling Blues were a big factor in Friday night, but the goal was to ensure that the audience was able to win a big crowd and TV audience.
The Magpies will host Geelong in the first Friday night game of the year – a clash that, on paper at least, should get away from it on the right foot.
Auld is with the nigh-impossible task of devising a way to have 18 teams play 22 games each by season and making it fair and fair for all. Regular blockbuster fixtures like Anzac Day, Dreamtime at the G and Queen's Birthday only add to his headache.
The AFL does this using a formula based on the 18 teams as they finish on the ladder into three groups of six – the top, middle and bottom. The 'weighted rule' method has a bottom-ranked team playing clubs from the top group and vice versa.
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The league announced its pre-season series on Monday, with clubs to play two warm-up games once again.
But next year's pre-season series will take place over two weekends instead of three.
The league has not settled on the format or the dates for the game.
– AAP
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