• Click here for the full fixture
• Top teams light up Friday nights
• AFL introduces week off before finals
• The 'must-see' 25 of 2016
A MONDAY night game to decide eighth spot on the ladder or perhaps who gets the double chance?
How about a Thursday night opening to the finals series?
And an AFL football-free weekend in the middle in which many of the major individual awards are featured and the finals of regional and suburban competitions take their place in the spotlight.
Any or all of the above are on the table following the groundbreaking move by the AFL to schedule a weekend off between the final round of the season, which is round 23 next year but likely to be round 24 thereafter, and the opening week of the finals.
And while a Monday night "win and get in" encounter might not attract a capacity crowd on what is still a school and work night, it would be a TV ratings smash and for the AFL, that is one of its key requirements.
The 2016 fixture explained
The decision will have its detractors. Pretty much anything the AFL does attracts derision from any number of quarters, but this one shapes as promising, particularly if it avoids the increasingly farcical situations such as those this year when Fremantle left half its side home for the round 23 trip to Port Adelaide and North – with the approval of head office – rested a bunch of players for its match with Richmond.
The AFL's integrity took a beating that weekend, and while there are associated risks with putting the season on hold for a week just as it gets to the pointy end, AFL chief executive Gillon McLachlan did point out that a free weekend on the eve of the finals paves the way for the best presentation of what he declares as "the nine most important matches of the season".
The other notable aspect of the 2016 fixture is the reward it gives to the clubs who perform well.
"To the victors go the spoils" might as well be the theme as the choice Thursday and Friday night timeslots go to the clubs who have, well, earned them. The Hawks get six Friday and two Thursday night games but then again, their quest for a fourth-straight premiership will be the dominant narrative of the season.
The Western Bulldogs go from zero Friday night games to three and why not, given their rapid improvement and more to the point, the way they play their footy.
All up, 12 clubs get a slice of the Friday night action and we're already looking forward to Patrick Dangerfield returning to Adelaide to take on the Crows in round eight, the two Friday night games in Geelong and in particular the round 11 match at Blundstone Arena between North and Richmond.
Thursday night footy also features marquee clubs with Adelaide, North Melbourne, West Coast, Essendon, Port Adelaide, the Swans and Hawthorn (twice) all getting a look in.
The converse of course is that six clubs – Carlton, Brisbane, Gold Coast, Greater Western Sydney, Melbourne and St Kilda – won't see any Friday night action at all.
No doubt, this is partly a reaction to having an awful Carlton side feature so prominently in 2015, but the promising St Kilda and the emerging Giants might have had some claims to one prime-time match. They are already entertaining teams to watch.
And for the Blues, it truly is a 'penthouse to the outhouse' situation. The Blues have gone from dominating Friday nights to six Sunday 1.10pm games. Yes, they are marketed as 'family-friendly' timeslots but they actually clash with junior sport in many cases and as for the corporates, they just don't like that time of the weekend at all.
Not that the Blues are likely to give anyone but their diehard fans many reasons to watch them in 2016 as the long and laborious rebuild begins in earnest.
In footballing terms, you can glean into this what you will. But Adelaide's opening eight weeks of North Melbourne, Port Adelaide, Richmond, Sydney Swans, Hawthorn, Fremantle, Western Bulldogs and Geelong looks particularly brutal for new coach Don Pyke.
On the other hand, Geelong's brilliant off-season continues with Adelaide being the only top-six team from 2015 the Cats play twice. Add to that the four night games at Simonds Stadium and it is a great draw for the Cats.
You can study the draw for hours and find all sorts of quirks. Seven straight games at Etihad to open the season for the Dogs, who lost just twice there in 2015.
Collingwood and Essendon meet just once for the first time in a quarter of a century, while the season opening Cats-Hawks game might be the only time these newly traditional rivals will play off for the year.
Looking at the overall picture, there is a little bit of the same and a bit of the new as well. With the new, $2 billion plus media rights deal already locked in from 2017, who can blame the AFL for a bit of tinkering?
