Lance Franklin has come out swinging over the AFL’s divisive wildcard round, labelling the concept “stupidity”.

The Swans and Hawthorn champ rarely goes rogue with public criticism, but he gave league headquarters a bake on his podcast released this week.

After watching the Swans put the Eagles to the sword in Perth to the tune of 128 points, Franklin said he is “worried” about the evenness of the competition and the number of matches where teams lower on the ladder are blown away by opposition clubs.

Watch every match of every round of the AFL Premiership Season LIVE and ad-break free during play on FOX FOOTY, available on Kayo Sports | New to Kayo? Join now and get your first month for just $1.

Speaking on The Buddy & Shane Show in an episode released on Tuesday, Franklin said it was “ridiculous” to push ahead with the wildcard finals round which gives teams a chance to win the premiership despite finishing the regular season ninth or tenth on the ladder.

The hotly debated issue returned to the headlines this week when Cats coach Chris Scott suggested the league created more finals matches “for no good reason”.

Following Geelong’s one-point loss to Hawthorn, he told Fox Footy’s AFL 360: “See, this is why I shouldn’t do this so close to the game, I speak my mind – which is good for you, and bad for me, generally.

“I tend to think they just made it up. Just threw in a couple more Finals for no good reason except cash.”

Franklin has become the latest former player to criticise the concept.

You can watch his rant in the video player above.

“I think it’s ridiculous. It is. It’s like just leave it as a top eight,” he said to co-host Shane Crawford.

“As I said before, the drop off is big. As I said, there is 6-7 really strong teams and then the rest are pretty average. I dunno. For me they should have left it as a top eight.

“Earn your right to make the top eight. Don’t just be gifted a top 10. For me it’s just ridiculous.

“I think they should have just left it. When they play around with all these rules and change different things. It’s stupidity. I think you earn the right to be in the top 10.

“It’s ridiculous. That’s my honest view. I think they’ve just done it and they haven’t given it too much thought. It annoys me.”

Hawks legend Crawford was even more blunt.

“We think it’s dogs*** and I agree,” he said.

“It rewards mediocrity. That’s what it does. If you’re going to make the finals, you’ve got to get yourself into the top eight at least. Eight is too many as it is.”

AFL chief executive Andrew Dillon has repeatedly defended the concept.

“By expanding the final series, we’ll have all games of consequence during the home in a way which we know our fans love,” he said in November.

“We know fans will go to those games. We know they’ll watch them in numbers. But what we also know is that, particularly final series this year where we had pretty much every game as a close enough to a sellout, our fans love finals games.”

It has led to suggestions the integrity of the competition has been compromised.

Franklin appears to be of a similar belief after watching the Swans thrash the Eagles at Optus Stadium.

“It was a demolition job, wasn’t it Crawf,” he said.

“It was an absolute pumping. I’m not going to lie I love watching the Swans and I love watching Hawthorn. But I turned it off after half time. I was like, ‘I’ve got better things to do than sit here and watch that game’.

“Let’s be honest, it was horrible to watch. When you’re watching games of football, you want to watch tight contests within a couple of goals and you want to see effort. For me there’s such a big drop off.

“You’ve got probably six to seven really strong clubs who are going to compete and be amazing. It’s going to be a good finals series, there’s no doubt about that. But then the drop off from six to seven down to the bottom, it’s massive.

“When you smash a team by 130-odd points, it’s worrying signs. I personally feel.”

He went on to say: “People at the AFL wouldn’t like seeing that”.

Originally published as ‘It’s ridiculous’: Buddy unloads in rare public criticism of AFL