With the pre-season competition looming, the AFL and the AFL Players' Association still haven't struck a new pay deal but the league is confident the players won't strike.
Geelong's Patrick Dangerfield and Collingwood skipper Scott Pendlebury are among those who have been vocal in their support for potential strike action should an equitable collective bargaining agreement not be struck.
The protracted, and at times tense, negotiations continue ahead of Thursday's first pre-season match between Collingwood and Essendon.
But AFL executive Travis Auld told reporters on Tuesday he had no reason to believe the impasse would result in industrial action.
"We're in constant dialogue with the Players' Association ... that being the case, there's certainly no concerns from our end," Auld said.
"There's certainly been no indication of (strike action) ... we are meeting regularly with them, we are making progress and, that being the case, I don't foresee any issues.
"There's a lot of work going on in the background and we're confident we're going to get there.
"This is a large and complicated deal so it will take some time.
"There's no hard deadline on that."
Auld was speaking at the official launch of the pre-season competition at Princes Park.
The AFL will trial a variation of the rushed behind rule during this year's series, which will see a ball up occur 15m out from goal instead of a free kick awarded.
The league is also continuing to examine ways to overhaul the home-and-away season fixture.
Auld, who is the league executive heading up the fixture working party, said the radical change could still happen as early as next year.
He said work on a 17.5 model that would see see teams play each other once then split into three groups for the last five rounds continued.
"We're into that process but it will take some time ... it's incredibly complicated," he said.
"There are a lot of impacts of changing our fixture.
"But we want to give it some real consideration. Perhaps it ends up where it is or perhaps we change it but it's too early to tell.
"(But Gillon McLachlan) likes to push things - we've seen that with the women's competition - it's never too late.
"So we're going pretty hard at the moment to see if we can make some changes or what changes could be made in 2018."
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