This week's launch of the NAB Challenge was, to say the least, understated. What little buzz was being built around the start of actual games between clubs was completely overshadowed by Essendon's capacity to even to field a team. Just another reason that when football really does take back the headlines, the AFL perhaps needs a bigger and better year than it has ever known. Entering season 2015 it feels almost as if football fans – still harbouring the discontent of the AFL's poor scheduling and the disastrous variable-pricing ticketing system last year – need to be lured back to the fold, no longer prepared to just fall in line behind a sport that for many seems to have become less a religion and more a mere interest. The alarm bells for future generations have been ringing a while, and they might have sounded again this week when latest Australian Bureau of Statistics figures showed that in 2013-14 nearly three times as many people were playing soccer as football. But this is about more than code versus code. It's about a creeping emotional detachment from the highest levels of our indigenous game, even among the rusted-on.

Last week, reminded of former Essendon premiership centreman Leon Baker, I tweeted some YouTube footage not only of him but of some shooting stars of football in the 1980s and '90s – players such as dynamic Carlton forward Peter Bosustow, Melbourne spearhead Allen Jakovich and Geelong's Bruce "The President" Lindner. The response was overwhelming, almost universally along the lines of "what we've lost". Indeed, for many, football seems to have peaked in the '90s, when the product was cutting-edge enough, yet the game still retained some touch with its roots. You could still go to the odd old suburban ground, you could still witness high-scoring shootouts between spearheads the calibre of Lockett, Ablett, Dunstall and Modra, and there was still room for a wider array of characters, body types and even positions on the field. AFL footballers are fitter and more skilled now than even then, yet, as Leigh Matthews noted this week, the increasing congestion of the game gives them fewer opportunities to use the latter attribute. As for character and flair, we've seen them progressively chipped away by coaching's eternal striving for structure, predictability and greater sense of team.

And coaching veteran Mick Malthouse isn't the only one of his ilk to concede that, while that's good for them, it isn't necessarily great for the game's fan base. There are more AFL clubs now than ever, but the points of difference between them increasingly have been stripped – in the styles of football they pursue, in the types of players they select, in where on the ground they play and even the venues at which they play. In 1985, 10 Melbourne teams played at nine different grounds. Now nine local clubs share just two. Of course, there's still hope: in the aggressive attack and running game of Port Adelaide; and the belief of the coaching fraternity that so effectively have defensive philosophies been honed, the only way forward now is to improve offensively. On a broader scale, the AFL has conceded its relative neglect of the rank and file, launching a series of initiatives to renew supporters' passionate involvement in the games they watch, and in their connection to their clubs.

Finally, there appears the realisation at an official level that, as big as AFL football has become on a corporate scale, the actual product it oversees has become more than a little vanilla. All of which is flavour for thought when the Hawks and Magpies kick off proceedings in Launceston on Thursday night. A memorable football year would often be viewed as a bonus. In 2015, it may well be a necessity, lest the AFL, to its horror, discovers the truth of that old line about not knowing what you've got until it's gone.