The AFL's model in drawing up its fixture each season is, we can now safely say, deeply flawed and hopelessly inequitable. And it needs a complete overhaul asap - oil, tyres, spark plugs, the lot.

For this sham of an arrangement that is served up year after year without serious scrutiny or rigorous debate only serves to widen the gulf between the rich and poor clubs, the well-supported and the unpopular. The playing field it produces is about as level as the slope from the Grand Stand down to the Tavern Stand at Lords.

Already, leaked news reports ahead of Friday's release of the 2011 fixture give major cause for concern.

AFL's draw supremo Gillon McLachlan let slip to 3AW listeners on Tuesday night that Carlton would get a decent slice of Friday night action next season - up to seven games we now believe - because the Blues have been identified as an emerging 'up-and-comer'.

Really? Carlton? The same Blues who won just three of their last nine matches last year and lost Sam Jacobs and Shaun Grigg in trade week? Of all the teams earmarked for improvement in 2011, how is it that Carlton end up with the armchair ride into prime time? Just so Dennis Cometti can drool a little bit more over Chris Judd?

What about Richmond or Melbourne or North Melbourne? I'd have thought it might be time for the AFL to take a punt on any of those three as 'big improvers' and help give them a little kick along in their never-ending struggle to turn a profit.

But we have also read separate reports that, rather than be given some encouragement, North Melbourne has again been dealt the draw of death: one Friday night game, five Sunday twilight games and only eight appearances on free-to-air TV.

Now, a quick declaration here: your correspondent happens to follow the Kangas and has watched with increasing frustration as each year the club gets pushed to the margins by a league whose motivation in piecing together the draw is effectively all about the bottom line, and keeping the broadcast rights holder happy. 

League CEO Andrew Demetriou gave the game away in an Age article last month: "Our starting point is to grow attendances ... We use our fixture and schedule to try to maximise attendance, we do that unashamedly," he said.

This means Friday night games will always be dominated by Collingwood, Carlton and Essendon, no matter if they are playing like busted flushes. 

The folly of this arrangement was exposed this season when Channel 7 scheduled the Bombers to play three Friday night games in a row late in the year. In two of those games, during a diabolical run of form, they were absolutely hammered and proved a ratings fizzer.

The Demetriou Manifesto also means the Sunday twilight timeslot - TV's graveyard shift - is often populated by the likes of Melbourne, Richmond, North, Port Adelaide and West Coast - some of whom have not helped their cause in recent times with bland and uninspiring form.

But it gives rise to the obvious question: how are the league's paupers ever expected to escape this cycle of poverty and hand-to-mouth existence when they're shunted into the shadows, well away from the prime-time limelight? Until the 2012 draw is released, that will remain a rhetorical question.

Yet the problems with the fixture run deeper than simply the league's obsession with the big and the powerful.

They actually begin with the AFL attempting to squeeze a 17-team competition into 22 rounds. That square peg simply won't fit into that round hole. So it's compromised from the outset. 

No other elite sporting competition in the world tolerates that sort of lopsided draw where teams play their rivals an unequal number of times: not the EPL, Serie A, NRL, NBA, Sheffield Shield, Super 14 rugby, not even the Alice Springs croquet association.

In that same Age article last month, which highlighted the inequities in the 2010 draw, outgoing Sydney Swans coach Paul Roos said the 22-round system, under which the 16 teams (last year) played each other once and seven teams twice, was grossly unfair. "We've gone backwards in terms of the draw. You face the distinct possibility that the ladder can give an indication of the draw rather than the form of the team," Roos said.

"It has to be of concern if you are trying to make the competition level. One of the fundamental things that exists in football is the fixture, and this makes a little bit of a mockery of talk about being equitable."

A mockery indeed.