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Greater Western Sydney coach Kevin Sheedy wants his players to work harder and closer with schools to attract more fans after yet another low crowd at Showground Stadium.
GWS’s crowd woes continued on Saturday when a mere 6,324 turned up to watch their 100-point loss to West Coast.
It was the second-lowest GWS home crowd on record, behind the 5,830 on hand for Adelaide’s 135-point thumping of the Giants at the Sydney Olympic Park venue 13 days ago.
“We’ve got to do a lot of work in schools,” Sheedy said.
“Every player and every coach will be allotted four schools in the west.
“I’ll know my schools and I’ll be attending them and letting them know about AFL.
“So you’d have 50 people at four schools, that’s 200 schools … I think that’s the best way to look at developing this club, through youth.”
While persistent rain hammered Sydney in the lead-up to the game, it cleared and Saturday’s game was played in ideal conditions.
The Giants are still searching for their ideal timeslot, but Saturday afternoon is not a great fit given it clashes with the vast majority of local Australian rules fixtures.
“One of the awkward difficulties is the Sydney footy league play today,” Sheedy said.
“I mean if they weren’t playing today, they might have possibly been here at the Giants game.
“So we need to look at different ways to get crowds here, maybe we need to look at readjusting the AFL draw.
“…The two crowds (at Showground Stadium) that we’ve got are Adelaide, and Adelaide never leave home.
“And Western Australia is probably a suburb of Cape Town. So it’s very hard to get a lot of West Australians here from Cape Town.”
“…When this team grows, people will start coming more and more. Before long you’ll have 10, 12 or 15 thousand.”
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