Greats from North Melbourne and the Western Bulldogs say their former clubs need to be given the stand alone Good Friday game, should the league decide to play on the religious holiday next year.
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Star players turned commentators Wayne Carey and Luke Darcy say clubs like the Roos and Dogs will never be able enhance their brand if prime time fixtures such as the looming Good Friday blockbuster are reserved for the bigger Melbourne clubs.
Whether the AFL should break from tradition to schedule a game on the sacred holiday, and if so which teams should play, was a hot topic over the Easter long weekend with talkback callers and top club and league officials.
Collingwood president Eddie McGuire said the game needed to feature at least one big Melbourne club to make it a success, although he claimed he was not necessarily lobbying for the Pies to be involved.
Instead, McGuire's point was that the richer clubs agreed to adopting equalisation measures under the premise that the game's overall revenue would grow - and therefore he said Good Friday should be used to generate more money for all clubs, rather than be handed to two low-drawing teams.
Carey said North Melbourne deserved the first chance at Good Friday because it was the Roos that first approached the AFL about the concept decades ago.
The Hall of Famer said he believed the Roos and Dogs were two teams "on the up" that would provide an exciting contest on Good Friday next year if they were given the chance.
Darcy agreed, insisting it was vital the two clubs be given a blockbuster of their own to help capture the minds of young supporters and new corporate partners in the future.
"I feel really strongly about this," Darcy said on Channel Seven 's Talking Footy.
"The discussion is, do we need to play a major-drawing club?
"If you want to talk about equalisation.... it's one thing to actually give them [smaller clubs] enough money just to survive. But if you don't give the poorer-drawing clubs a chance at one marquee game, how do their supporters ever get the chance to go to a marquee game?
"How do you ever actually draw and get the next generation of supporters through? You don't. If you isolate the smaller-drawing clubs, they'll never get any bigger.
"You'll get 60,000 people to a Bulldogs and North game on Good Friday, I've got no problems with that."
