New to Kayo? Join now and get your first month for just $1.<\/a><\/p>\nSpeaking on The Buddy & Shane Show in an episode released on Tuesday, Franklin said it was \u201cridiculous\u201d 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. <\/p>\n
The hotly debated issue returned to the headlines this week when Cats coach Chris Scott suggested the league created more finals matches \u201cfor no good reason\u201d. <\/p>\n
Following Geelong\u2019s one-point loss to Hawthorn, he told Fox Footy\u2019s AFL 360: \u201cSee, this is why I shouldn\u2019t do this so close to the game, I speak my mind – which is good for you, and bad for me, generally.<\/p>\n
\u201cI tend to think they just made it up. Just threw in a couple more Finals for no good reason except cash.\u201d<\/p>\n
Franklin has become the latest former player to criticise the concept. <\/p>\n
You can watch his rant in the video player above. <\/p>\n
\u201cI think it\u2019s ridiculous. It is. It\u2019s like just leave it as a top eight,\u201d he said to co-host Shane Crawford. <\/p>\n
\u201cAs 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. <\/p>\n
\u201cEarn your right to make the top eight. Don\u2019t just be gifted a top 10. For me it\u2019s just ridiculous. <\/p>\n
\u201cI think they should have just left it. When they play around with all these rules and change different things. It\u2019s stupidity. I think you earn the right to be in the top 10. <\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s ridiculous. That\u2019s my honest view. I think they\u2019ve just done it and they haven\u2019t given it too much thought. It annoys me.\u201d<\/p>\n
Hawks legend Crawford was even more blunt. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe think it\u2019s dogs*** and I agree,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n
\u201cIt rewards mediocrity. That\u2019s what it does. If you\u2019re going to make the finals, you\u2019ve got to get yourself into the top eight at least. Eight is too many as it is.\u201d<\/p>\n
AFL chief executive Andrew Dillon has repeatedly defended the concept. <\/p>\n
\u201cBy expanding the final series, we\u2019ll have all games of consequence during the home in a way which we know our fans love,\u201d he said in November.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe know fans will go to those games. We know they\u2019ll 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.\u201d<\/p>\n
It has led to suggestions the integrity of the competition has been compromised.<\/p>\n
Franklin appears to be of a similar belief after watching the Swans thrash the Eagles at Optus Stadium. <\/p>\n
\u201cIt was a demolition job, wasn\u2019t it Crawf,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n
\u201cIt was an absolute pumping. I\u2019m 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, \u2018I\u2019ve got better things to do than sit here and watch that game\u2019. <\/p>\n
\u201cLet\u2019s be honest, it was horrible to watch. When you\u2019re watching games of football, you want to watch tight contests within a couple of goals and you want to see effort. For me there\u2019s such a big drop off. <\/p>\n
\u201cYou\u2019ve got probably six to seven really strong clubs who are going to compete and be amazing. It\u2019s going to be a good finals series, there\u2019s no doubt about that. But then the drop off from six to seven down to the bottom, it\u2019s massive. <\/p>\n
\u201cWhen you smash a team by 130-odd points, it\u2019s worrying signs. I personally feel.\u201d<\/p>\n
He went on to say: \u201cPeople at the AFL wouldn\u2019t like seeing that\u201d. <\/p>\n
Originally published as \u2018It\u2019s ridiculous\u2019: Buddy unloads in rare public criticism of AFL<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Lance Franklin has come out swinging over the AFL\u2019s divisive wildcard round, labelling the concept \u201cstupidity\u201d. The Swans…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":596089,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[560],"tags":[638,64,63,55,639,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-596088","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-afl","8":"tag-afl","9":"tag-au","10":"tag-australia","11":"tag-australian-football-league","12":"tag-australianfootballleague","13":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/596088","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=596088"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/596088\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/596089"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=596088"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=596088"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=596088"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}