BRISBANE captain Dayne Zorko says the AFL will need to be careful with scheduling games too close together in the back end of the season to protect players from injuries.

The AFL is considering a number of ways it can restart games in the second half of the season with the hope of reemerging from its COVID-19 shutdown period.

SOFT-TISSUE ISSUES 'Turbo' Eagles hit with setbacks

It aims to fully complete its remaining 16 rounds of games and could play through to the end of December, potentially with games fixtured on shorter breaks.

Zorko is an advocate for pressing ahead with the season once the AFL has gained health and government clearances, but said there will likely be some casualties as a result of a condensed set of games.

LIONS' SHUTDOWN REPORT CARD Weapons, downfall, more

"I think the mature players would be pretty happy there's not much training and there's just plenty of recovery. We're going to have to be extremely careful of the days' break we have between the games we play," the midfielder said on Wednesday.


"Whether that advantages mature teams or not so mature teams, I'm not too sure. The important thing would be about recovery and putting the players' safety first.

"As players, we'd be very diligent with what we do around our rehab stuff and prepare ourselves up to play off those short turnarounds, because there's no doubt you will fall into the injury bracket at one point because your body will be fatiguing."

The 31-year-old said it would be challenging to expect players to back up games within four days without expecting injuries to spike.

"I think four would be extremely tight. I know we've played off five days a couple of times in the past few years and they're certainly do-able. Whether you could do that consistently, I don't think that's possible," he said.

"To be backing up four or five days [between games] in a row would certainly be pushing bodies to their limits and stretching the lists."

Zorko, a four-time best and fairest winner with the club and a key to its top-four hopes in 2020, said clubs would need another 'pre-season' to be staged before games return.

He also indicated he thinks dropping main list sizes would ease the demand for resources at clubs.  

"I think we're diluting the talent a little bit [at the moment]. This is my opinion, I think if we had 35 players and then half a dozen rookies or project players or whatever you want to call that [group], I think that would be probably enough," he said.