"It's a major problem": Collingwood CEO Gary Pert. Credit:Josh Robenstone

"That's something that's got to be looked at and it's got to be fixed up because if you just keep on rolling that out over the next two, five or 10 years, that means the debt of the combined clubs continues to grow and I would say the clubs are the basic building block of the AFL competition and we would like to see every club in a strong financial position, without debt, announcing as a minimum break-even figures.

"I think it's got to be a major red flag for the entire industry every time a single club announces a loss – especially when they're adding to the debt that they owe and it just keeps on snowballing.

"For every season we let this debt grow for the clubs, the harder it is to pull it back, and I'd go as far as to say if we don't deal with it now, potentially we get to a point where we can't actually salvage it back because it's just too big a figure.

"If a couple of the clubs start to fall over that ripples out through the whole industry, and we're seeing that in other sports, and it's just not what the best sporting competition in the country should be looking like.