KIERSTEN DUKE: AFL’s opening round to combat the NRL’s bold Las Vegas move has been a clear failure

Dear Mr and Mrs AFL,

I wasn’t quite sure who to send this to as an English girl living in Sydney who loves her rugby league, so will just send it to the MCG and hope you get this.

One of the hardest things to do is admit when you are wrong and after (not) watching the schemozzle that is “opening round” — because it was over barely before it had begun — it is probably time to surrender the beginning of March to the NRL and go back to the drawing board.

It was a fun idea — play a few AFL games in frontier States Queensland and NSW at the expense of the fans who actually made your sport so successful in Victoria, South Australia and Western Australia.

It sort of worked last year with some sold-out games involving big name clubs Sydney and Brisbane but this year was a flop with even Mother Nature passing her judgment by only allowing two games out of the four to go ahead.

Melbourne is supposed to be AFL heartland but last weekend with balmy summer-like temperatures the only big sporting event in town was the Melbourne Storm’s thrashing of Parramatta in front of a sellout crowd at AAMI Park on Sunday.

The GWS Giants north of the border could only muster 19,000 fans on the same day as they tore apart the Dad’s Army Collingwood Magpies.

The NRL was given a massive free kick by its fiercest rival and who knows, a few Aussie Rules supporters may have liked what they saw and decide to go see the Storm play Brisbane next month instead of watching AFL minnows Richmond take on St Kilda later this month.

No one seems to know what the point is of opening round, which confusingly is also known as zero round mostly because it gets zero out of 10 on the success scale, except the AFL hierarchy who appear too stubborn to abandon it.

We all know why you are doing it even though you won’t really admit it — to have your own novel party trick like the NRL’s Las Vegas season opener a week earlier. Yes, the NRL probably bit off more than they could chew by doubling their Sunset Strip show to four games, but few NRL fans are complaining about raiding their children’s home deposit fund to bet it all on a trip to Sin City.

AFL fans on the other hand have voiced their disapproval pretty loudly with nearly all Sandgropers polled by The West Australian saying it should be scrapped. Not much of a surprise given there is not much else to do across the Nullarbor.

Seven’s own AFL expert Nick Riewoldt said on the network’s new panel program Agenda Setters on Monday that it should be scrapped.

Opening round is also a headache for the teams themselves as it creates early season byes for nearly half the sides with only four games played the first weekend, followed by a full round the week after. The NRL instead spreads its opening round over eight days with the Vegas games on a Sunday before the rest of the teams play the following weekend, with all prime time TV spots covered.

And all NRL teams will get a crack at going to Vegas to share the love instead of only the northern State AFL teams being guaranteed a spot in the opening act. The NRL also cleverly scheduled several of its first round games in its suburban Sydney heartlands like Kogarah, Manly and Campbelltown (the first two were sellouts) and would have had a blockbuster at Suncorp Stadium on Friday night if not for ex-cyclone Alfred.

The off-season feels incredibly long as a sports fan. You find yourself counting down the days until footy resumes again. Then the AFL decides to make you wait another week to see your team play because they’re heading up north. The Vegas experiment is uniting the NRL, while opening round is dividing the AFL.

As a NRL fan I say keep shooting yourselves in the foot Mr and Mrs AFL, but as a sports lover please stop taking your most loyal fans for granted and close the door on opening round.