Suns president Tony Cochrane has labeled the AFL's decision to revert to a day time Grand Final timeslot for 2021 as a "massive, massive mistake", suggesting a twilight match would be the most suitable option.

The AFL announced earlier this week that this season's decider would commence at 2:30pm on Saturday, September 25.

The decision means the Grand Final returns to its traditional timeslot after being played at night at the Gabba during a pandemic-influenced campaign.

Speaking onย SEN,ย Cochrane stated that the AFL have missed their opportunity to move away from the traditional early-afternoon timeslot for 2021 following the success of last year's game.

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โ€œIt rated its pants off โ€“ it was a fantastic success on every metric you can apply to it, right across the country. And for the first time in a long while, we absolutely thrashed the NRL in comparison with their ratings of their Grand Final,โ€ he said.

โ€œTo go through all that pain to get that success and then just to go back to the same old, same old 2:30pm Saturday afternoon timeslot โ€ฆ personally I think itโ€™s a massive, massive mistake.

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"For the future of our great game, itโ€™s vital that we bite the bullet at some stage, and we take this challenge on.โ€

The AFL pulled in 3.812 million views nationally for last year's game, the highest viewership since the 2016 Grand Final and surpassing the NRL Grand Final's tally of 2.966 million.

Cochrane believed a twilight Grand Final would be a sweet-spot time for the AFL to schedule its Grand Final for the future.

โ€œI think twilight is really the ultimate answer and it really wins and ticks nearly everybodyโ€™s boxes, but it wasnโ€™t to be.โ€