another issue - if you have a full reserves comp, do you expand the lists? do you still have topup players? to me it would make more sense to extend lists to maybe 50-55, which then brings about more costs etc. possibly could be offset by increased broadcasting of those games. but i doubt it. 55 person lists (and that would be the minimum to almost-guarantee that 2 sides could be formed every week with only minimal & occasional top-ups) would be a very bad thing for the SANFL. Lists currently top out at 44 (plus international rookies, basketballers and weird stuff). Those extra 11 players, per club, i.e. 198 players extra on AFL lists would come from somewhere. No prizes for guessing where.
A better solution for the SANFL would be the for the AFL reserves comp to be established on similar list sizes to now, and continue to move top-ups in the direction that most AFL teams are going anyway, i.e. a testing ground for young players. Because it's not a massive priority for AFL clubs whether their reserves win ('winning culture' yadda yadda notwithstanding), and it's much more about identifying and developing talent, they will be much more interested in having a look at potential draftees (who are kids), rather than paying coin to have say Kieran McGuinness or Brett Eddy playing for their reserves side. One 'leadership player' is neither here nor there in the grand scheme. The greatest demand is for the U/18s, while the draft age remains as it is—and so the simplest model would be that each SA AFL club is allocated 4 U/18 SANFL clubs (there will only be 8 in total: Port Adelaide has, in a bargain it may come to sorely regret, signed away its U/18 zones forever from 2015 on), from whom it picks its weekly top-ups. Whenever not topping up an AFL reserves side, SA juniors continue as they were, i.e. they continue to 'belong' to their SANFL club unless and until being drafted. The rules of the AFL may need to be changed to accommodate this—otherwise, they could just go with the 'Rafferty's rules, gather left-over bits & pieces from country leagues, ammos etc' model, ditching the ill-conceived 'hey, SANFL clubs, can you loan us some spare over-18 players?' experiment that the Crows have tried in 2014.
Either way, the SANFL gets its soul back, the AFL clubs get their development league, and the SANFL's quality doesn't fall away dramatically either.