Brereton ignites pre-finals bye debate

IS the league better or worse off with a pre-finals bye?

The brainchild of outgoing CEO Gillon McLachlan has been in place since 2016 as a measure to ensure the final game of the home and away season is played with the appropriate intensity.

But Dermott Brereton had added to the chorus of frustration and revealed himself to also be against the concept.

Instead, the five-time premiership Hawk believes a pre-grand final bye might be the way to go.

“I don’t like it,” Brereton told SEN’s Crunch Time of the pre-finals bye.

“It [the season] used to be a marathon, and my analogy was that if you enter the colosseum in front after [23] rounds, you deserve open track in front of you.

“Don’t give the advantage back to the opposition to let them get fit and healthy again and if we want the grand final to be the showpiece to the world, millions upon millions of people, give them 14 days before the grand final.”

As Brereton notes, now that league rules state players are immediately sidelined for at least 12 days after suffering a concussion, it’s a matter of when, not if, a player misses the grand final in such fashion.

It’s a point that has also been raised by Craig McRae and Ross Lyon in recent weeks.

“Impacting on that even more is the possibility of someone missing a grand final… a good player who will make the spectacle even better, the possibility of missing through a traumatic head injury,” Brereton said.

Chris Fagan is another senior coach to have previously called for the scrapping of the pre-finals bye.

It’s unclear what Andrew Dillon’s plans are in regards to the finals series structure.

The 2021 season was the only anomaly in terms of the bye, which was shifted to the week before the Grand Final as the league moved Perth for that year’s decider.

The 2023 finals series will be opened by Collingwood and Melbourne at the MCG, with that venue to host three games across the first week.

– SEB MOTTRAM/ SEN