CERTAIN numbers simply won't divide. Sixteen does not like going into 22.  Twenty-two is not comfortable being divided by 18. And 18 has the devils' own time when you put it into 24.

There is that dangling half-dozen left and what do you do about carving that fairly among 18? That is the conundrum confronting the AFL at present and the reason the players' association has proposed that when the AFL balloons from 16 to 18 teams, the regular home-and-away season be trimmed from 22 rounds to 17.

This would seem to simplify matters and eliminate the inconsistencies that dog the fixture now. Except, of course, it doesn't.

The existing draw is a mind-bending accommodation of demands and requests shouldered on the fraught basis that all teams cannot play one another twice.

There is a persuasiveness to the players' argument that in a six-month season players tire and fans weary, particularly those (fans and players alike) in the lower reaches of the ladder yearning for next season, not next week.

Those fans of the pathetic would confront the same pitiless longing in a shorter season - it would just come sooner.

The idea that football lovers want to have more weekends when football is not played than when it is, is counter-intuitive, though not necessarily wrong.

The noblest aim of the 17-round season, to create fairness among clubs and eliminate the draw's inconsistencies, is not truly achieved by playing each side once.

Is parity achieved if my side plays West Coast and Adelaide away and yours plays them at home? How many times does your side travel compared with mine? And which teams do they travel to play?

These mechanics, to say nothing of the difficulties of long-term contracts with stadiums to play a prescribed number of matches, would create yet another number that is not easily divisible.

These sorts of decisions are not premised on sporting fairness but economics.

The first and over-riding priority will be what broadcasters want. They will be unlikely to embrace the less-is-more philosophy when it comes to content.

The allure of the proposal to play each other once is further soured with the question of who gets to play Collingwood, Essendon or Carlton as a home game?

Do clubs commence splitting the gate at every game as was once the case until it was decided the capitalist virtue of incentive to market matches was better.

Regardless, if there are only 17 rounds in a season, which clubs get to have eight home games and which clubs nine? And if clubs are only selling nine-game membership packages - at best - then what of the impact on the cost of membership and the consequent drop in club revenue?

These latter matters need not necessarily cloud the nobler concept of improving the fairness of fixturing but, in truth, they cannot do other wise.

The league has adjusted and arranged its fixturing and competition for years to harness wealth and growth and indeed this debate has arisen because of a league determination to expand into places the game barely has a toe- hold in.

To deny the economics is to be foolhardy. Almost as naively optimistic as suggesting - as the players did - that the number of games should be cut but not, correspondingly, the players' wages.

See, some numbers just don't fit.