A-League round 1 crowds: the debate

Pip, Clive comes out and reckons his side will do well to average 10K a game, it wasnt so long ago he was talking of dominating the Gold Coast sporting scene, well the Titans have an average of over 15K and Clive cant use the excuse that he has a crap stadium, as Skilled is excellent for rectangular codes.

Zac, this "reply feature" is annoying ... can something be done when you receive an email for a new comment, when you click on it ... it will take you straight to the comment located on the thread...? I hate searching back trying to find where it is placed... Cheers ~~~~~~~ KB

Guys - a reminder that this thread is about football, not AFL.

Is that another one of your conspiracy theories...? ~~~~~~~~ KB

coz he's a bit like you - absolutely full of it.

Why...? ~~~~~~~ KB

And not only those listed reasons but also the strong and established AFL and NRL

Palmer's been at it again, backing up what he said about going through undefeated: "I think our team is as good as any team in the league," Palmer said. "People say that's a hard goal to achieve but if you look at our defence ... it's very, very hard to see how that defence can be cracked. "I think we're in a good position. We have played 20 games (including the pre-season) so far and been undefeated. "We played Singapore and beat them 5-0. We played New Caledonia, which is 120th in the world, we beat them 5-0. We played Hong Kong, we beat them I think 5-0 as well. We played Fulham in the Premier League and we beat them 2-1. "We played the Roar, we would have beaten them 3-0, we beat them 3-1." Palmer then suggested, albeit tongue-in-cheek, that his club was the equal of Scottish giant Celtic, which played a pre-season game against the Roar. "Celtic beat them 3-1 (3-0), so we're about the same as Celtic I suppose, probably a little bit better because Celtic couldn't have beat Fulham," he said. "What more can the club do on a football field?" Please, someone, anyone, shut this bloke up!!

Brisbane's crowd was about 8,000 up on their average last season. MVs was played on a Thursday night, winter, very little FTA mentions, a training night for Juniors/most clubs, in the business of AFL season, compares favourably with 2 other AFL crowds at the same ground this weekend (22,000 bulldogs v West Coast who had 3-4,000 supporters and a Melbourne derby between Nth melb vs Melb 16,000 on a fine Sunday). NQ should be trying to get 10,000 as an average but probably have the hardest task given regional population and RL history of area. Adelaides crowd was very good Newcastles crowd was poor and they need to do a lot better. As Ghost said an extra 14-15,000 went to games this 1st round vs last season. That is good. If crowds are averaging around 14,000 by December it will be a record average for HAL as the last third of the season draws much bigger crowds. Encouraging crowds overall but still plenty to be done by clubs to maximise their exposure and attendance.

Davo All excellent points & worth noting. In essence the A-League is supported without a leg up from the media. Nobody knows just how much more succesful it could be with a little help & free promotion in the sports section of the daily news on Commercial TV for instance .Read when the A-League first started that football was supported almost entirely on an emotional/personal level in Australia whereas Cricket/AFL/NRL/RU were supported on a commercial /media level. 5 years on the Socceroos are making a dint in the Commercial media side but the A-League still has a way to go until it moves from the emotional/personal to the commercial/media.

There is one side of me that says the A-league probably deserved higher crowds, but It a good point to argue, what league in the world attracts over 14,000 per game with; 1. No free-to-air tv. 2. Minimal exposure in the print media, particularly in Sydney. 3. Hardly any media promotion by the governing body (FFA)

Wether the GFC still exists or not we are still in belt tightening mode. Considering there is a whole extra fixture added I am modestly pleased with the crowds Fury might take a while to get going but just under 9grand is nothing to sneeze at for your first game. Maybe a drop in ticket prices might make things a bit sweeter. Newcastle will be back. Culina is a good manager despite what we did to him at SydFC, and he will turn the negative press around. Bums in seats sooner then later.

I want to be able to say: fair enough....but I can't!!!

As they say - you only live once. I waited all my life to see football matches played in my hometown at a proper football stadium. So next season I am going to treat myself. A game a week guaranteed.

The one thing nobody has mentioned about the Roar-GCU crowd was The Ekka (Brisvegas version of the Royal Easter Show) which drew 50,000 people on the same day (and another 50K on Sunday). Again, why was this game played at Suncorp? The Ekka moves to the Gold Coast in a few weeks, nobody down here went up there to watch it, and Roar fans would have made the trip to Robina for this game. Also worth noting that those Ekka numbers are 20% down on last years crowd. Working people's pockets are hurting.

Two memberships??? And I gather you're not talking the Dons!!! Bugger the new franchise!!

All you can say about crowds in round one is that they are marginally up on last year. End of story for that one. You will have to consider the pattern of the whole season to see where were at this year. That pattern is consistent from year one to year four. it goes like this:- 1 -It is a complete myth that starting the A-League towards the business end of the AFL/NRL seasons or indeed at the beginning of the Eurofootball season's affects crowds. The average remains the same after the AFL/NRL grand finals & the Euro seasons are well underway. 2-Crowd average increases when Melbourne play either Sydney or Adelaide at home. 3- Crowd average increases over the Xmas,New year period & after till season end. Averages:- Round in 1000's 1-13.25 2-9.5 3-13.6 4-12.8 5-9.5 6-11.25 end of AFL/NRL finals 7-12.0 8-9.8 9-14.6(MV v SFC) 10-12.3 11-10.0 12-11.4 13-7.5 14-8.2 15-13.9(MV v AU) 16-9.9 17-15.6(Xmas) 18-17.4(New Year) 19-11 20-14.5 21-17.0 The other thing not to bother about is concern about smaller towns regions getting crowds that are below the A-League average such as Townsville. Not long ago I posted a table showing that the J-League average of 19000 was derived from the average of Urawa-45000,( then on a sliding scale) down to a team with an average of 10000.

One game does not a season make. As the original poster said, there are a lot of other distractions to take into account. This is the HAL’s first real crack at the big three football codes and they’ve got to do it going up against international tests, the ashes and regular season matches imapcting the finals. I think in that context the HAL should be reasonably happy. I do wonder with the Brisbane Roar if they have bitten off more than they can chew with Suncorp, would love to see their discussion papers around the decision to be based there.

Why the poor crowd in North Queensland? Even more so why the low expectations for the crowd? It was a 'clear' weekend in NQ (Cowboys weren't on at home on the weekend), Fowler's first game and I would think Sydney FC would be one of the draw cards. If Melbourne Hearts or West Sydney drew that crowd on the opening weekend next year / year after it would be labelled a disaster, why not in NQ?

I watched most of the Bullies game on Saturday. They were worse in the first half than MVFC were on Thursday night. In regards to Heart I reckon there will be some support crossing over. There will be that curiosity factor. This might be the case if supporters keep getting fed up with Ernie's tactics. I also think Heart will be pitching for disaffected ex-NSL supporters who have not embraced MVFC. Anyway, I see myself getting 2 memberships next year as a way to support the new franchise.