The AFL has a curious way of following trends set by the NRL in recent years.
I'm not about to go all Peter V'Landys and start calling you the FLA and wonder what's about to happen to house prices south of the border, but from State of Origin, to Magic... Ahem, Gather Round, international expansion, and now the very fabric of match day, there is a pretty clear trend line.
They do say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, and there is little doubt the AFL is looking for the best possible product it can put up for fans to justify its own $4 billion TV deal signed off.
On Thursday, Collingwood and Geelong will trial something that the NRL have been doing for years.
None of this warm-up on the ground for a quarter of an hour before the ball up and then stand around waiting for a siren to ring out, with a coin toss, banners and club songs.
No, Collingwood and Geelong will warm up on the ground, retire to the sheds - or the dressing rooms as you so insist on calling them south of the border - and run out a couple of minutes before game time.
I have been doing plenty of reading up on this in the last week or so, and have uncovered all sorts of concerns.
When will the cheer squads be able to get their banners off the field? When will the coin toss happen? Surely the club songs aren't going to be cut down to shortened versions?
Tradition this, tradition that.
But I'm here to tell you it won't actually look all that different.
In the NRL, we have been using this strategy for as long as I can remember, and speaking to people far older than me, as long as they can remember.
We still get team songs as the teams run onto the ground, we still get a coin toss held in the sheds earlier, and we still get, for the Storm at least, a banner to run through.
That is the one concept I'd steal from the AFL for every club immediately in our 13-man code. It's a great fan activation and something the AFL does very well.
But to sit there and suggest the banners can't operate because teams run onto the field three and four minutes before the start time respectively, is objectively wrong.
In the NRL, teams run out about 60 seconds before kick-off. The Storm still manage to have a banner at each and every home game.
Maybe the only legitimate concern is around the toss, given how much the AFL is impacted by wind and weather conditions. Do it 45 minutes out, the wind changes and all of a sudden you picked the wrong option.
The NRL is impacted by the wind, don't get me wrong, but not quite to that level.
The coin toss, in fact, is one of the most relaxed parts of an NRL game. It doesn't get televised, but you often see pictures or video if you're at the stadium of two captains in their casual shirts, shorts and thongs with a referee flipping a coin through the air, then peering up the tunnel to try and work out which way the field runs before electing which way to go.
Speaking purely from a fan's point of view though, and from an atmosphere point of view, the idea of teams running out, standing around for 15 minutes and then playing just doesn't sit well.
And yes, the AFL gets bigger crowds than the NRL, but from a purely atmosphere point of view, it's run out to song, song stops, kick-off, first run of the match.
When I attend an AFL match - and yes, it does happen, as rare as it is, it is one of the things that has always baffled me. How do you keep a crowd interested for 15 minutes after the run-on?
And what about the kids that, in the NRL, get to play their own mini games on the field almost all the way up to kick-off as the crowd and anticipation builds.
Sydney and Melbourne are very, very different markets, and very, very different people. If you were an alien species, you'd wonder how we are the same country.
But the bottom line is, from a sports point of view, there are no negatives to trying this.
Just like there were no negatives for the AFL in giving everything else the NRL does so well a crack.
That's not to say the NRL is perfect - far from it. We should be learning from other successful codes, and as much as V'Landys wouldn't admit it, I'd argue the sport has.
But this is a simple one. Allow the players to warm up in a controlled environment, and then get on with the game.
I'll be watching keenly on Thursday evening.
Scott Pryde is Zero Tackle's editor. For all the latest NRL news and opinion, head to zerotackle.com
