When the AFL Commission this week handed down the crucial rulings dictating the shape of the competition for the next two seasons it was greeted with general indifference.

The football community raged instead over the trivial. Caught in the minutiae of a spat over bruise-free footy and Brent Harvey’s insistence on kicking goals, the mechanics at the very core of how the game is played passed largely without debate.

Had the topic been Collingwood and the number of times it travels interstate all manner of radio and television stations would’ve gone into melt down. The draw would’ve been doused with condemnation while all manner of conspiracy theorised.

Instead, those that could be bothered endorsed the retention of 22 games and the final eight. The grounds most commonly cited: apparently we just hate change. Like everyone else I blame Kevin Bartlett and his rules cronies.

We weren’t being offered real change at any rate. A wild-card play-off in name only that would’ve pitted together two teams that had already definitively proven they were inconsequential to the Premiership race.

The most in-depth analysis pithily observed a disaster for Richmond as the final nine had been overlooked.

The rationale for the decision from headquarters was sound insofar as this was a decision for 2012-13 while Gold Coast and Greater Western Sydney bed down. It’s volatile and exciting enough without further tampering or experimentation.

The longer-term view I would offer is this: 18 teams playing 22 games each makes no sense. None.

It is a relic of the suburban VFL competition when 12 teams rather delightfully and entirely fairly played each other twice over the course of a season.

As it applies to the national competition it is so random as to demand eventual change. We cannot accept forever the inevitability of an unfair fixture and the hand wringing that nothing can be done to fix it.

As sure as you read these words this too will change.

It will require imagination from administrators and understanding from the constituency. Those are precisely the qualities that have delivered us to this juncture of history.

The suggestion of 34 rounds is patently ridiculous. The attritional war AFL has become could never be sustained over such an expanse let alone the issues of venues and interest.

The minimalist approach has an undeniable charm - 17 rounds emphasising quality over quantity. Every game loaded with elevated significance. The NFL - from which many good reforms in our code have been derived - thrives with a compact regular season.

The Players Association modelled such a season a few years ago and the AFL summarily dismissed the notion.

The simplistic slap down is money. TV stations want product and you can’t reduce the output while jacking up the price.

But this is a sport as well as a business. For sport to compel it must make sense.

The next couple of years should be used to broaden our minds in search of a solution. If one were genuinely sought many would be sent forth.

As a rough sketch picture this:

17 rounds - the swim through fixtured at the outset of the season - to establish three tiers of 6 teams.

The final five rounds would then be played as each team faced the others in their quartile. There’d be incentives for promotion and relegation from each section.

That play-off period would then send teams into a finals series.

There would be dozens of ways to polish such a raw concept. Derivatives might prove superior. I don’t for a minute proclaim to have the answer.

But some energy and fervour should go into it. Expanding shouldn’t be the only goal. Refining will soon be just as critical.

Gerard Whateley will lead the Grandstand call of Geelong v Western Bulldogs on ABC Radio