West Coast football boss Gavin Bell has revealed the club will request an additional home game from the AFL following the league's commitment to host Gather Round in South Australia for the next three years.
The AFL announced prior to the ninth and final match of the weekend that SA had been locked in to host Gather Round until 2026, a move that received mixed reactions despite a successful festival across Round 5 and the state.
South Australia had initially claimed the hosting rights after a bidding war for the honours that also included New South Wales and Western Australia broke out, with those two states seen to be in contention as the next in line to host Gather Round after South Australia, had it been planned to change each season.
The decision to extend SA's grip on Gather Round for a further three seasons has sparked criticism from Bell, who believes it "would be ideal" for the league to hand WA clubs an additional home game to "balance" out the disadvantage of their already extensive season-long travel requirements.
Speaking toย The West Australian,ย Bell said the club will seek feedback from the league as to whether West Coast could host an additional home game in the future.
"With that commitment for Gather Round in Adelaide for the next three years, we will be seeking and asking for an additional home game in Perth," he said.
"We want to bring an eastern states team over for another home game in front of our members and supporters. If we're going to play an extra game in the year, it would be great to balance that off.
"Wherever Gather Round is held outside of WA, we don't want to be disadvantaged given our travel requirements that already exist. If we can offset that with an extra game at Optus that would be ideal.
"Maybe instead of it being home and away games it should be the number of games travelled.
"...Part of it is the nature of where we live in a national competition. We understand that. But if there's an opportunity to balance that with an additional home game it would be fantastic."
Both WA clubs travelled almost 60,000 kilometres in 2022, a figure that reads close to four times the distance travelled for some Victorian sides.
West Coast will play their second game at Adelaide Oval in a week when they clash with Port Adelaide on Saturday, before returning to Perth for their Round 7 bout against Carlton. Trips to Melbourne and Tasmania will follow in the succeeding three rounds.
