THE AFL has defended its decision to allow Geelong to host a final at Simonds Stadium after former great Greg Williams said it gave the Cats a "massive" advantage over Fremantle.
Williams, who started his 250-game career with two seasons at Geelong, said the Cats had been given a huge leg-up for Saturday's qualifying final.
"[Ross] Lyon said it doesn't matter, but they'll be flat over there I'm sure," Williams said on Monday, after it was announced he would award this year's Norm Smith Medal at the Grand Final.
"I think they've lost one out of 47 or something, so they [Geelong] would be favourites.
"I think Geelong are in the box seat and Andrew [Demetriou] has given them a big favour this week as well.
"They'll be thanking Andrew and the AFL."
Demetriou said there was no more advantage for the Cats than there would have been if the Dockers had qualified to host the match at Patersons Stadium.
He also rejected claims the competition should have stated Simonds Stadium was in the frame to be a finals venue at the start of the season.
"I don't share the view that because we've got this situation, we shouldn't be flexible and we shouldn't look at other options," Demetriou said.
"We even looked at a double header [at the MCG], which also wasn't in consideration at any time during the year but we also had to look at that as a possibility.
"The fact is, we only had this situation because of the uniqueness of having these three other clubs – Hawthorn, Collingwood and Richmond – play home games at the MCG.
"That doesn't happen that often and the combination is an extraordinary one."
He also denied suggestion the decision was financially motivated.
There have been 4000 tickets made available to Fremantle members.
Around 19,000 tickets in all were sold before lunchtime on Monday.
Demetriou said crowd and venue research had indicated that allocation would be enough to cater for the demand of Freo fans expected to travel for the game.
Flights won't allow for that many to attend and the last time Fremantle played a final in Melbourne – last year's elimination final against Geelong at the MCG – less than 1000 members came.
Demetriou also said there were "consistent policies across the board", and Collingwood and Port Adelaide members would be allocated the same amount should they have to play Fremantle at Patersons Stadium next weekend.
"I can promise you and assure you that any Fremantle supporter or member who wants a ticket will get a ticket," he said.
"We've made 4000 tickets available and my guess is the 4000 won't be taken up.
"Commentators were saying yesterday that we're depriving 10,000 people of being able to watch the game at Etihad.
"There's simply no factual evidence historically to support that proposition."
Demetriou said there wouldn't be an "emergency meeting" regarding a rule change to prevent teams resting as many players as Fremantle did in the final home-and-away round.
However, he did say the League was looking into it and had been planning to for a while.
"We're not looking at it because of what happened on the weekend; we've always said this year we're going to look at the rules and regulations relating to teams competing on their merit," he said.
"That came as a result of what happened with Melbourne (which was fined $500,000 after a tanking investigation earlier this year).
"This is work that is well underway, in progress, we're looking at what happens with other codes and hopefully we'll be able to come up with something that is consistent for everyone across the competition."
The Dockers made 10 changes on Thursday, with seven players listed as "rested". They withdrew two more on game day.
Demetriou said he had "no criticism" of Fremantle's selection policy and that the League had to "allow the club to manage their list properly".
"You're assuming they did rest players and they could very well have had players that were sore or injured," he said.
"Ross Lyon is a fantastic coach, he's getting his team ready and primed for the finals.
"I'm sure that after a long season they've got some players with niggles but on balance, I'm not going to talk about that game – we do need to look at the totality around the rules around that, which we said we would do."
