The first match of the AFL season on Thursday between Richmond and Carlton could not come soon enough for the league and its chief executive Gillon McLachlan.
Attention would finally return to the field and the public would focus, to start with, on whether Richmond could recover from another disastrous finals series last year and if Carlton could ever return to its glory days after virtually two decades in the wilderness. 
So goes the theory.
Instead, the AFL has had another week of drama surrounding the ongoing and seemingly never-ending Essendon drugs saga in the lead-up to Thursday night's match, including the revelation that former rookie Hal Hunter claimed the club had ignored his attempts to find out what substances he was given and injected during Essendon's now infamous 2012 conditioning program.
Banned Essendon star Dyson Heppell also said publicly he felt a great sense of injustice against the club, while McLachlan said the 34 past and present Essendon players had "a legitimate right to talk to the club about being compensated" for being outed from the sport.
Essendon, which has already signed 50,000 members, will stay in the news this year thanks to its status as wooden spoon favourite and the 34 players appealing their one-year ban to the Court of Arbitration for Sport in Switzerland later in the year.
Hawthorn, which has won the past three grand finals, is expected to at least go close to winning a fourth and match Collingwood's effort from 1927-1930. Collingwood may be a big improver as could Geelong, which is on track to break the 50,000-member mark for the first time thanks to the recruitment of star midfielder Patrick Dangerfield.
But for McLachlan and AFL chairman Mike Fitzpatrick, most of the action in 2016 will be off the field. Flushed with $2.508 billion worth of broadcasting income over six years from 2017 onwards thanks to the huge deal signed with News Corp, Seven West Media and Telstra last year, AFL leadership now has to decide how to spend the money.
The league is close to clinching a $100 million to $150 million deal to buy Etihad Stadium on the fringe of the Melbourne CBD, but the 18 clubs want and need more money.
"Across the football industry there is a flattening of non-broadcast income ... so it is critical we identify opportunities and grow our business where it makes strategic sense," said Richmond chief executive Brendan Gale after the club struck a deal to manage eight large leisure centres that will add about $5 million to its revenue.