OK, so we're talking about North Melbourne, not the African savannah, and what has become a famous piece of half-time entertainment gone spectacularly awry, when in 1978 a circus animal being paraded around Arden Street was spooked and began to stampede.

But the decision to return senior football to the Roos' old home ground in next year's pre-season for the first time in more than 30 years is in a football sense, exotic in itself. And another reason the month-long dress rehearsals for the upcoming AFL season are becoming more of a fan favourite than they were.

What will now be known as the JLT Community Series will look a different beast indeed from the NAB Cup of only three years ago, and not just because clubs are no longer playing for any form of trophy.

The last of those was won by Brisbane over Carlton, the culmination of a series which began with a round of triple-header shortened games and finished amidst a general torpor and a grand final crowd of fewer than 25,000, a far cry from the 75,000-plus who'd flocked to Waverley for the equivalent game 20 years previously.

The removal of any silverware made the pre-season a competition in name only, essentially just the commercialisation of what used to be known as practice matches. But what has emerged in its place is in a way more valuable.

Clubs still get the chance to blood recruits and trial different gameplans. The AFL still has the opportunity to trial potential rule changes. And now the game's fan base has more likelihood of getting a taste of the way the game used to be.

The fixturing in regional towns has become a bigger feature, one which makes a lot more sense than games in the past played in places like Cape Town, Wellington or Abu Dhabi.

Recent seasons have seen games in Wangaratta, Shepparton and Bendigo. Next March, when Collingwood and Richmond play there, Moe will be added to that list.

Outside Victoria, the regional centres continue to get their share of games, too, Coffs Harbour, Mackay, Geraldton, Mandurah, Mount Gambier and Albury all on the pre-season menu.

But now there's another region, long-forgotten in football's headlong rush into the professional era, making a comeback of sorts. You may have heard of them. Chances are you might even live in one. They're called the suburbs.

There's an increasing element of back to the future about the pre-season for 2017, with three games in next year's pre-season scheduled for old AFL venues in Arden Street, Whitten Oval and Princes Park.

The Bulldogs' old home has already had a run again a couple of years ago. And the NAB Challenge game played at what is now Ikon Park along Royal Parade last February was a spectacular success.

The old haunts have more of a community reserve feel about them these days, with more open areas and grass, and fewer stands and turnstiles, but as the near 20,000 who turned up at Carlton for the Blues' clash with Essendon last February proved, they can still be accommodated.

Likewise in other states. While West Coast and Fremantle will play a pre-season derby in Geraldton, the two South Australian AFL clubs will occupy SANFL club South Adelaide's Noarlunga home for a weekend in March.

These games have become important points of cultural difference in a football calendar now played out at just one venue in both SA and WA, and in Victoria, just three (including Geelong).

Along with other recent initiatives like restoring the odd VFL curtain-raiser before games and the traditional kick of the footy on the hallowed turf after them, there's more evidence that, however token, the AFL is now at least more prepared to take some cues from the past.

In an age where the rank-and-file football fan finds it harder than ever to achieve the same sort of intimacy with their club as they used to, February and March will at least be a time when everything old is new again. Except, perhaps, the elephants.