The AFL must get brave under Craig Drummond and Andrew Dillon as Peter V’landys continues his ambitious NRL agenda

The headlines screamed about a $5 million NRL State of Origin game to be played in New Zealand from 2027 onwards.

Already hunting a record NRL TV deal, V'landys was also publicly trying to drive down the price of the NRL’s potential investment into England’s Super League competition.

Fresh from an epic night Grand Final with astonishing ratings figures, the NRL’s message is clear.

The code’s leadership is on the move as a progressive, adventurous risk-taking code ready to expand with relentless innovation and new teams in Perth and Papua New Guinea within three years.

You can accuse V'landys of being a one-man publicity machine for himself, but you cannot accuse him of lacking ambition.

As Eddie McGuire said on Thursday of the NRL supremo and NSW Racing CEO: “Peter V'landys has done a pretty good job in what he is doing”.

“There might be a lot of smoke and mirrors in it but gee I tell you there is enough there for him to kick things along and I don’t want to see us get left behind. You have to be up on the pace otherwise it goes past you very quickly.”

As departing chairman Richard Goyder trumped a club power play and got his man Drummond into the top chair, the contrast was obvious.

Drummond as the AFL’s version of V’landys?

Not in a million years.

As he told the Herald Sun in a rare interview in early 2021 when he was elevated from board member to Geelong president, he has never been an interventionist boss.

The former Medibank CEO backs his team and gets out of their way.

“I am very passionate about the footy but it’s about hiring a great executive to do their job. I am going to be very respectful of the line between non-executive and executive,” he told this masthead.

“We have a great executive and I am very clear we don’t get involved in things like selection and second-guessing from the football department. We hire great people like Chris Scott, Stephen Wells and Simon Lloyd to make those calls.”

A year on from that statement Geelong had won its 10th premiership with Drummond backing up his word as a boss who didn’t stick his nose in business he didn’t believe he could positively influence.

Like the departing Goyder, Drummond can point to his record.

Goyder will leave the AFL next March with the league in rude good health.

He will cite record $1.039 billion revenue in 2024 with an underlying profit of $45 million, record attendances and memberships, 582,000 registered participants and the owner of Marvel Stadium.

The question for the league and Drummond is whether the league needs a greater risk appetite in coming years.

Does it need to take bigger swings in these uncertain economic headwinds at a time when the NRL is nipping at its heels?

It would be churlish to suggest that the AFL’s big recent moves have been a Gather Round stolen from the NRL’s Magic Round and a return to the State of Origin contest that will never replicate the NRL’s incredible NSW v Queensland rivalry.

But what are the big new projects that will drive the AFL’s growth across the next decade?

It isn’t international expansion – Port Adelaide’s China experiment is over even as the NRL boasts that it is about to turn a profit two years into its five-year Las Vegas experiment.

For Drummond and CEO Andrew Dillon it is Tasmania and the women’s game.

This week’s meeting of four Tasmanian parliamentarians with the AFL highlighted the challenges for the league in selling its vision for a 19th side.

They were given half an hour of the AFL’s time where the league stated its position – no stadium, no team – and they left frustrated by the experience.

If McGuire was in charge of Tasmania he would be whipping the joint into a frenzy.

Where is the hype? The razzle dazzle?

Surely the AFL should be promising Tasmania the world to lure its parliamentarians into voting yes on that stadium.

The 2028 Brownlow Medal in Hobart.

Multiple AFL drafts in coming years.

Gather Round in the near future.

A full suite of pre-season matches played across the 2030 pre-season if the new stadium is ready.

Not just AFL games but more content of all persuasions for that new stadium.

If the AFL will not stump up more cash for the stadium how does it nudge its multinational sponsors into naming rights deals for the new training headquarters or club?

How does it put the full might of the AFL into promising content for this new club and stadium?

McGuire told SEN Radio the AFL is getting “slaughtered” in its ratings on Grand Final day, and he is right in that it is time to maximise our audiences with a twilight contest.

The AFL drew 4.18 million viewers compared to the NRL’s 4.46 million viewers and if the rugby’s contest was jaw-dropping, the AFL’s decider was within a point 19 minutes into the third term.

It is unquestionable the league is leaving viewers on the table with an afternoon game.

What was incredible was that the NRLW Grand Final also drew over a million viewers, as did all three NRLW State of Origin games.

There is no easy fix for the AFL as we come to the end of an AFLW home-and-away season where the standard has never been better but the wow factor, attendances and ratings remain worryingly low.

That NRLW decider was on the same stage and day as the NRL Grand Final, while the AFL refuses to play its Grand Final at Marvel Stadium.

And the blockbuster 1 v 2 clash between North Melbourne and Hawthorn this round is played on a Friday night in Frankston even as the Roos break football records.

Surely some form of rep footy is needed for the AFLW, which kickstarted its competition when the best and brightest played in Melbourne v Western Bulldogs clashes.

The hope is the men’s State of Origin clash in February will catch fire, even if a mid-season game would have fuelled weeks of speculation about selection intrigue leading up to that contest.

So Drummond and Dillon will start their new partnership in March aware neither are a V'landys clone and neither want to be.

Drummond says his priorities are “clear”: Fan engagement, growing the game, realising its full potential, making fans the priority, listening to clubs.

More Coverage

The key detail change that sees New Zealand land State of Origin

Peter Badel

The one reason why footy’s best will front up for Origin’s return

Eliza Reilly

Dillon has now surrounded himself with the elite support crew in Tom Harley and Greg Swann that McLachlan had when Dillon did so much of the heavy lifting as his key lieutenant.

No one who knows Dillon or Drummond has ever described them as reckless.

But there will come a time when they will need to be crazy brave if the AFL wants to charge into the next era rather than protect its hard-won gains with conservative management.