COACH Paul Roos says the opening round of the AFL season was up there with the best he’s seen in more than 30 years of football.

Speaking to Melbourne TV, Roos said “the quality of footy in round one was probably as good as I can remember it”. 

With the Suns and Giants now in their sixth and fifth AFL season respectively, Roos said the competition was now evening up.

“We went through four or five years of [it being] really tough when the bottom teams weren’t getting the early draft picks, because the Giants and the Suns were [getting them],” he said.

“All of the good talent started to even out a little bit over the last couple of years, and now we’re starting to see St Kilda [put in] a really good effort over Port [Adelaide], so there are some high, quality teams across the competition.

“I think we’re going to see, hopefully, a pretty even season.”

Roos said the season promised to be an “interesting” season after a fascinating opening round.

“I think there will be a lot of even footy and a lot of even teams this year and the odd blow out every now and then,” he said.

“Most of the footy on the weekend was pretty close and pretty tight – Richmond and Carlton, North [Melbourne] and Adelaide and even the Lions kicking 100 points against West Coast Eagles, which was a really good effort.

“I think [Fremantle coach] Ross [Lyon] talked about [his side looking like it had] a Sunday walk in the park [after losing to the Western Bulldogs in round one] … but you can see when teams are really on and teams aren’t ready to play, there are going to be some big differences.”