THE RESOUNDING player support for a repeat of Saturday night's state representative match sooner rather than later was backed yesterday by Kevin Sheedy.

While Brisbane Lions coach Leigh Matthews maintained during the lead-up to the game that clubs had everything to lose and nothing to gain, there was a groundswell of support from the participants yesterday. And Sheedy, who played assistant to Victorian coach Mark Thompson, said players should act on their enthusiasm and make formal recommendations to the AFL.

"How often and who plays and under what sort of rules would need to be debated," Sheedy, a supporter of the concept continuing, said.

"I think you've got to sit down and have an overall review. I doubt it would be played next year because this was a one-off game where the players played for charity, but I think everyone should sit down and talk to the players and then put up a recommendation to the AFL and then the AFL can sit down and have a chat about it."

After the match, attended by almost 70,000 people, Dream Team captain Andrew McLeod said the players involved had embraced the game and wanted a repeat.

"They want to be a part of it, they want to play representative footy and it's something the AFL have to look at — if it's biennial or whatever," he told Channel Nine. "From a player's perspective, I think it certainly has a place in our game … we love to be able to represent our state in some way, shape or form."

McLeod said playing state football every year would not change his thinking.

North Melbourne's Brent Harvey said he would support state matches being played every two or three years, Carlton's Brendan Fevola, the Allen Aylett medallist, and Cats forward Cameron Mooney also threw their support behind the continuation of state games.

Meanwhile, Matthews proposed a model pitting two best-of-the-best teams against each other, though not based on the players' state of origin and only "about once a decade".

"We've never had the best of the best," he said. "I love the best of the best concept — the fact that the best of the competition's players are out there more so than state versus state," he told Channel Ten's Before the Game.

"But if it happened every year it isn't so special."

The Lions coach also said that state sides should be named, but not played, at the end of every season.

"I've believed that for a long time. Each year you would have thought each state, and the West Australians do it, should pick their own state team at the end of each year. Every state should do the same and award the jumper. I've got no idea why that hasn't happened over the years," Matthews said.

As for the teams swapping guernseys at the end of the game, which meant Jonathan Brown accepted the winner's trophy wearing a Dream Team strip rather than the Big V, the Victorian skipper said the switch had not been planned.

Brown said: "When Pete Burgoyne came up to me and he looked at me, I thought, well he's had about 35 touches; it's not probably not a bad swap, but I wasn't real keen."

Brown changed his jumper at half-time, so he still had one, but said he "wouldn't have minded having the Big V on when I got up on stage".