Crook stated during the week he believes the long A-League off-season was something which needed to be changed as it was to the detriment of players, proposing another round of games, whereby clubs would play each other four times during the regular season.

And Ferguson and Burns have both come out in support of the idea of extending the season, as the club flies out to continue its lengthy pre-season in South Africa.

“The season is too short,” Ferguson told The West Australian. “To make the competition fair we need to all play each other four times, two at home and two away.

"That would add to the current format and balance out the long-haul games. Last season we had to travel to Wellington twice, but they came here (Perth) only once. To me that's not fair.”

He continued: “A six-month lay-off for the players is not good. It's not good for any professional athlete, so we have to look at growing our season.”

Burns, who won last season's Joe Marston medal in the Grand Final, reiterated Ferguson's stance, also adding he wasn't sure about the format for a season extension.

"A 27-round season plus finals football is not long enough. If we want to improve our football we have to extend it,'' Burns told the Herald Sun. "We currently have 20 weeks of pre-season and by the end of that we're absolutely dying to play games for actual points.''

"I'm very open to options of ways we can extend the season and shorten the pre-season. (During) my 10 years in Europe, the most you'd ever do is four to six weeks of a pre-season and you're playing sometimes 50 games in a season.”

Meanwhile, Ferguson added he felt the introduction of a FA Cup-style knockout competition, floated as the FFA Cup, could be part of a solution.

“The addition of an FFA Cup I believe will add to the excitement, but we need to play more games. Last year our off-season was 22 weeks. This year it's only 16, so we're slowly getting there,” he said.

Earlier in the week, Crook had called for a longer A-League season for the sake of the competition and player development.

"The plain facts are as a coach and a group of players you don't want to have to the period off that you're having now," Crook said.

"Is there a perfect way? No, but the clear facts are we can't continue to go on with a huge off-season that we do. If the game is going to want to move forward, it needs to be broadened.

"Whether that's in another round of games - for me it would be the fairer way, to play each side twice away and twice at home. We can't continue to try to develop players when we're playing six months of the year, it just doesn't work.

"If we play longer through the year then we'll develop players."