The AFL must resist the temptation to simply re-place an existing blockbuster on Good Friday, and should instead utilise the opportunity to schedule financially weaker clubs as a method of equalisation.
That's the the view of Western Bulldogs president Peter Gordon, who hit back on Thursday morning over speculation that powerful Essendon would be part of an inaugural Good Friday game next year.
With confidence increasing across the football community that the AFL Commission will ratify a proposal to fixture a game on the public holiday for the first time, Gordon argued that the league needed to be innovative if the concept were to materialise.
"You wouldn't fixture Carlton and Collingwood to play that day because it's a blockbuster no matter when you play it," Gordon told SEN.
"This is an opportunity over a three to five year period to start providing some free-to-air opportunity and some real opportunity to some of the smaller clubs.
"If we were hypothetically in a situation where the Demons and GWS for example (were fixtured) and built a rivalry betyween two teams over the next five years whereby you don't pack it out in year one, but by year five you have done something great, then you achieved something greater for the game than you would by fixturing two clubs, or even one club that was guaranteed to pack out Etihad Stadium anyway."
Gordon indicated that his club was putting up its hand to be involved in a match on Good Friday.
"We'd love to do it, we think that it's been done in other sports. I think a lot of attitudes have changed in relation to this and we'd be thrilled to do it."
The Bulldogs boss contended that handing the game to some of the smaller clubs would be in line with the AFL's recent moves towards equalisation.
"I think we ought to be bold and we ought to be creative and we ought to use the opportunity so that in ten or twenty years time one of these debates about equalisation which is that these clubs aren't using opportunities themselves, they aren't getting off their butts, goes away."
Former Hawthorn champion and SEN host was Dermott Brereton skeptical however about whether the chance that two weaker clubs could capture the wider imagination on Good Friday.
"If you take the Easter break, you've got Thursday night football, Saturday, Sunday, Monday you plop in Friday football, even a one-off game, that's five days of football in a row, unless it is a sexy game it'll get lost in there and people will just say 'so what' and won't turn up," Brereton said.
Commentator Kevin Bartlett said the potential opening on Good Friday offered the last opportunity for smaller clubs to have a marquee game. He slammed the notion that Essendon, which already plays in the Anzac Day and Dreamtime at the G blockbusters, should be granted another such event.
