Port Adelaide coach Ken Hinkley has called on the AFL to shorten the pre-season NAB Challenge in the wake of Thursday night's injury-plagued clash with Richmond.
The Tigers lost four players to injuries in the match, just two weeks out from their season opener against Carlton at the MCG.
And with no official title now riding on the round-robin competition, which involves all 18 clubs playing three matches, Hinkley believes it's too heavy a load for the clubs.
"Personally I believe three (games) is too many," Hinkley told SEN Radio.
"You don't need three to get ready. Most teams throughout the competition have used one of those games to field a really inexperienced side."
Richmond football boss Dan Richardson said the Tigers investigated calling the pre-season match off early but it wasn't "asked formally".
He said the Tigers, who lost the match by 48 points, were open to changes to the NAB Challenge.
"If (clubs) get one or two really solid games out of the NAB Challenge they're going to be happy with that," he said.
"Are there things that we can talk about as a industry that can improve it? Possibly.
"More interchange players and more consistent number of rotations for all teams in every game is one option."
Hinkley said the Power only based their pre-season around two proper fixtures, with the importance of intra-club matches now taking even more prominence.
"You can do plenty of combative stuff, you can do plenty of structural stuff. The thing you can't do is go game style against game style," he said.
"But if you've got it wrong by the end of February or March, it's probably not fixable."
Hinkley also discussed the idea of scrapping the pre-season matches altogether, allowing for a more balanced AFL premiership where each team would play eight rivals twice, rather than five.
In turn, he also believes it would lead to a more competitive opening month of football where he doesn't believe coaches would be instructing players to take it easy to avoid injuries.
"I reckon it would be flat out, anything could happen," he said.
"There could be a few surprises but I don't think the competition would be drastically affected by it."
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