Surely the failure of state of origin shows that the public are not interested in supporting anything other than their own team. I had no interest whatsoever in AFLX last year and that was with my team (Melbourne) winning its group. This concept makes a mockery of everything good about our game, and I wish they would stop messing with things that are not broken.
As an aside, this obsession that the AFL has with creating news / events, however trivial and banal, all year round is getting a lot of people offside. There is nothing wrong with having an off-season and letting people's interest build as the season approaches.